For just a moment, Trynair looked as if he were literally about to explode. The Chancellor’s entire body seemed to quiver, and a neutral bystander might have been excused for thinking he saw lightning flickering from the ends of his hair. But then, visibly, he fought for calm.
It’s just like you to blame every bit of this on the Charisians, Zhaspahr, he thought icily. It was you and your “final solution to the Charisian problem” which started all of this! I should never have let you push us all into accepting your proposals!
Yet even as he thought that, a small voice somewhere deep inside was reminding him that he had let Clyntahn push—or, at least, draw—the rest of the Group of Four into doing things his way. And he’d let Clyntahn do that because it hadn’t seemed important enough to him not to let him do it. Which meant, however much he might try to worm out of admitting it, that the disaster which had resulted was as much his fault as Clyntahn’s.
Of course, unlike Zhaspahr, I’ve at least been trying to make things better since then!
Still, he couldn’t honestly pretend that at least some of the blood wasn’t on his own hands. And however furious he might be with Clyntahn just now, the fact remained that it could be dangerous—even fatal—to push the Grand Inquisitor and the Order of Schueler too far. Ostensibly, and possibly even actually, Trynair’s power and authority as Chancellor was greater than Clyntahn’s. Even the Office of Inquisition was legally bound to accept the direction of the Grand Vicar, after all, and Grand Vicar Erek would direct the Inquisition to do whatever Trynair decided needed to be done. But if it came to an open showdown between him and Clyntahn, it was far from certain that the Order of Schueler would bother to remember to whom it owed formal obedience.
“Listen to me, Zhaspahr,” he said finally, his voice calmer than it had been since the conversation began. “This entire episode in Ferayd has the potential to do us enormous damage. It’s got to be handled very carefully from this point out.”
“Like hell it does!” Clyntahn’s native belligerence was rousing as surprise began to ease a bit. “They’ve murdered priests, Zahmsyn. They can call it whatever they want, but the fact is that they’ve killed men consecrated to the service of God! Yes, it’s a pity children were killed in the original confrontation. And, yes, servants of the Office of Inquisition were involved. But we’re in the midst of a fight for the very survival of Mother Church. This is no time to handle things ‘very carefully’! It’s a time to counterattack. They don’t have any proof of the authenticity of the documents they’re claiming to have. Call them on it. Denounce their claims as lies and convict them of murdering priests! Then go ahead and call for Jihad—proclaim Holy War and burn out the canker of rebellion and apostasy and heresy in Charis once and for all!”
“No.” Trynair said the single word softly, but there was nothing at all soft about his flint-hard eyes.
“Damn it, what are you waiting for?!” Clyntahn demanded. “For the fucking Charisians to invade the Temple Lands?!”
“If it weren’t for what just happened in Ferayd, I’d be a lot more willing to proclaim Holy War,” Trynair said bitingly. “Unfortunately, we have a little problem just now.”
“What problem?” Clyntahn half-sneered.
“The problem that while they may not have ‘proof’ of the authenticity of the documents in their possession, they do have the documents themselves, don’t they? Trust me, when they publish those documents abroad there are going to be enough people—especially sitting on various thrones scattered around the planet—who recognize the truth when they hear it. My office is the one in charge of Mother Church’s diplomacy, Zhaspahr. Believe me, I know what’s going to go through the minds of all those throne-sitters, and we aren’t going to like it very much. Because, Zhaspahr, they’ll also recognize what happened to Ferayd after King Zhames did exactly what we instructed him to do for what it was. They’re going to see these hangings as completely justified, whatever we may say, or whatever they may say openly.”
“So?”
“So how many Greyghor Stohnars do you want to create, Zhaspahr?”
Trynair’s question was sharp, and Clyntahn paused abruptly. Greyghor Stohnar, Lord Protector of the Republic of Siddarmark, and his predecessors had been the worst nightmare of the Group of Four and their immediate predecessors for years. There was no doubt in Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s mind that Stohnar would gleefully have overthrown the Church of God Awaiting in his own lands if he’d imagined for a moment that he could make the attempt and survive. For his part, Trynair had never shared Clyntahn’s suspicion that Stohnar was actively seeking a pretext to break with Mother Church. His fear had been simply that someday some difference of opinion between Siddarmark and the Church would spill over into open confrontation whether either side wanted it to or not. But in its own way, that difference between his own and Clyntahn’s view of Stohnar only lent his question even more point.
“What do you mean?” Clyntahn demanded after a moment, and Trynair smiled sardonically.
Fool yourself if you want to, Zhaspahr, he thought, but don’t expect me to do the same thing. You know exactly what I mean.
Of course, he couldn’t actually say that out loud.
“What I mean,” he said instead, “is that we’ve already seen Nahrmahn turn his coat and Sharleyan actually marry Cayleb. From all the reports I’ve seen, it seems likely Duke Zebediah is going to do exactly the same thing Nahrmahn did—and that even Hektor would, if he thought for a moment Cayleb would settle for anything short of his head. Now every other prince and king on the face of the world is going to look at what happened in Ferayd and realize that in Cayleb’s place, they would have done exactly the same thing.”
“The hell they would have!”
“I said they would realize that in Cayleb’s place they would have done the same thing,” Trynair said. “Although, to be fair, perhaps I should have said that they would have done exactly the same thing if they’d had the courage to. But the main point is this. Given the way Charis is going to present what happened, we don’t have a leg to stand on. No,” he raised his voice and jabbed the air with an index finger when Clyntahn tried to interrupt, “we don’t. Especially not after we’ve already been telling the entire world what you told the rest of us—that the Charisians started it. Well, they have the proof before them now that the Charisians didn’t start it, Zhaspahr. They’re going to be thinking about that if the Church suddenly declares Holy War and summons them to battle. You saw what happened when Chisholm was forced to fight a war it didn’t believe in. Do you want to see the same thing happen with, say, the Desnarian Empire? Do you want to hand Stohnar the pretext he can use, stand upon as ‘a matter of principle,’ to refuse to answer that summons? And before you tell me you don’t trust Stohnar not to do that anyway, let me point out to you that whatever the rest of the world may think, our resources aren’t actually unlimited. There’s a limit to the number of fronts we can afford to fight on simultaneously, Zhaspahr.”
“But it’s going to come to Holy War inevitably in the end, whatever we do,” Clyntahn pointed out. “It has to. Unless you actually believe there’s some way Cayleb might think he could patch things up with Mother Church after murdering her own priests?”
“ ‘In the end’ is not the same thing as right this minute,” Trynair replied, his voice as frosty as the winter snows outside the Temple. “Of course it’s going to come to Holy War sooner or later. The only one of us who doesn’t already understand that is Rhobair, and even he has to suspect that no other outcome is possible. And I agree with you that what Rock Point’s done only makes it more inevitable, ultimately. But we not only have to be aware of what other secular rulers may be thinking, Zhaspahr. We have to be aware of what other members of the vicarate are thinking.”
Clyntahn started to fire something back, then paused, his eyes narrowing in thought as he recognized what Trynair had actually said. What the Church could survive and what the Group of Four could survive weren’t necessar
ily the same thing, after all.
“There might be fewer of those other vicars to worry about than you know, Zahmsyn,” he said after several moments, his eyes flickering with a slyness Trynair found more than a little disturbing. “Trust me. The number of our . . . critics could find itself rather drastically reduced.”
It was Trynair’s turn to look thoughtful, eyebrows furrowed. It was obvious he was running through a mental checklist of the Group of Four’s present and potential opponents, but then he shook his head.
“We can’t afford to get too far ahead of ourselves, Zhaspahr,” he said much more calmly. “This . . . situation in Ferayd is going to cause enough problems as it is. If we simultaneously convince the other vicars that we’re planning on purging our opponents, then those opponents are far more likely to be able to whip up some sort of opposition block on the Council. In fact, they’d probably use what happened in Ferayd as the public basis for their opposition to us.”
“We can’t afford to be too hesitant, either,” Clyntahn countered. “If those opponents you’re talking about decide we’re weak, or that we’re vacillating, it’s only going to embolden them.”
“Perhaps so.” Trynair’s nod acknowledged Clyntahn’s warning, but his expression never wavered. “The problem is that we can’t uncouple Ferayd from someone like the Wylsynns—not now that Charis is planning on exploding it all in our faces. We may be able to weather Ferayd, and we may be able to weather the Wylsynns, but the odds of our weathering both of them at once are far worse.”
“So what would you do?” Clyntahn challenged.
“You won’t like it.” There was a warning note in Trynair’s voice, and Clyntahn snorted.
“And you think I’ve liked anything else you’ve had to say this afternoon?”
“Probably not,” Trynair replied. “But, as I see it, we have no choice but to take the Charisians’ charges against Graivyr and the others seriously.”
“What?!” Clyntahn’s jowls darkened furiously.
“Zhaspahr, whether we want to admit it or not, the truth is that what happened in Ferayd is exactly what the Charisians say happened. How we got there, whether or not Graivyr and the others were justified, is really beside the point in most ways. It certainly doesn’t alter the physical facts of who attacked whom and who was at the head of the Delferahkan troops when it happened. The Charisians are going to say their subjects were set upon by what amounted to lynch mobs led by priests of the Office of Inquisition. They’re going to point out that many of the dead were women, and that many more were children, and that children that young can scarcely have chosen to be heretics. For that matter, Zhaspahr, you know as well as I do that at least some of those Charisians probably were no more heretics than you or I are! There are devout Charisians who are horrified by this entire schism, you know. It’s entirely likely that some of those killed in Ferayd would fall into that category, and don’t think for a minute people like Wylsynn aren’t going to point that out if we don’t.”
“If we don’t?” Clyntahn’s eyes glittered with sudden suspicion.
“I know you won’t like it—I told you you wouldn’t—but it’s the only answer I see,” Trynair said stubbornly. “And it’s the only answer Rhobair is going to settle for, which isn’t a minor consideration in its own right. Unless, of course, you’d like to contemplate what would happen if Rhobair decided to join hands with the Wylsynns?”
Clearly, Clyntahn didn’t want to do anything of the sort, and Trynair smiled thinly.
“I didn’t think you would.”
“And we avoid this precisely how?” Clyntahn demanded, his face still dark and his eyes more suspicious than ever.
“We hold our own inquiry, and we conclude that the Charisians were right,” Trynair said flatly.
“Never!”
Trynair didn’t even flinch. It wasn’t as if Clyntahn’s instant, explosive response were something he hadn’t anticipated all along.
“We don’t have any choice, Zhaspahr. Either we hold the inquiry, and at the end of it we condemn Graivyr’s actions, or else Wylsynn and the other waverers on the Council—not to mention secular rulers like Stohnar—realize we’re whitewashing them. We can’t afford that, Zhaspahr. Especially not in light of the evidence Cayleb and his Charisians are prepared to present. Besides, it’s not as if Graivyr was still alive, is it? He’s dead. Nothing we say or do is going to affect him in any way, and even if we end up condemning his actions, we won’t be obliged to punish him; Cayleb’s already taken care of that little chore for us. Besides, think of all the points we’ll get. Faced with proof of wrongdoing by those pledged to Mother Church, even if that proof came from heretics and apostates, we will have acted.”
Clyntahn frowned, but at least he wasn’t shouting anymore, and Trynair pressed his advantage.
“Let’s be clear on one thing here, Zhaspahr. I realize there were special circumstances in Ferayd’s case, but you realize as well as I do that priests actually guilty of the ‘crimes’ Charis has accused them of are subject under Church law to exactly the punishment they received. In fact, according to The Book of Schueler, they were liable to far worse punishment. I know, I know!” He waved his hands as Clyntahn’s started to fire back. “It should have been done through a proper Church tribunal, and the extenuating circumstances ought to have been taken into consideration. But the fact remains that, aside from the way in which Church law was profaned when a secular authority judged and executed ordained priests, what happened to Graivyr and the others is completely in accordance with charges framed the way Cayleb’s framed these charges. We couldn’t deny that even if we wanted to, and, frankly, we don’t want to. Not at this moment.”
From the look in Clyntahn’s eyes, he, for one, obviously didn’t agree with that last statement. Not deep inside, at any rate. But he clamped his jaw on any protests, and Trynair continued.
“We’re not going to be ready to take the war to Charis until our new fleet is built and manned,” he pointed out. “If we were to declare Holy War tomorrow, it wouldn’t bring the day we could actually begin operations even an hour nearer. But what we can do with that time is use it to improve our own position before the day we can declare Jihad. Convene a special commission to investigate what happened in Ferayd, Zhaspahr. Look at all of the evidence, including anything from Charis. And if your special commission should conclude that Graivyr did what Charis accuses him of doing—and what you and I both know he actually did—say so. Publicly acknowledge what happened, express contrition on behalf of the Office of Inquisition, possibly even impose a public penance upon yourself—even upon me and the other two—for permitting it to happen. In the end, we’ll emerge with even more moral authority because we dared to admit wrongdoing within the Church at a time like this.”
“I don’t like it.” Clyntahn appeared to be oblivious to the fact that he was repeating something Trynair had already said several times. “I don’t like it a bit. This is a time for strength, not for weakness!”
“It’s a time for guile as well as for open confrontation,” Trynair countered.
“It will delay the final confrontation.”
“Not necessarily. Or, at least, not for long. Remember, we still need to build a navy before we can do anything effective against Charis, anyway.”
Clyntahn fumed silently for several seconds, then drew a deep breath.
“You really think this is necessary?”
“It may not be absolutely necessary,” Trynair acknowledged, “but it’s the best way I can think of to defuse Charis’ attack. For that matter, you know I’ve always thought it would be a mistake to declare Holy War any farther in advance of the ability to take that war to Charis than we can help. I know you and Allayn haven’t agreed with me entirely on that point. And I know Rhobair finds the entire notion of Holy War frightening. This is the best way I can think of to control when and where that declaration gets made. It leaves the initiative in our hands, and it allows us to stake out a claim to the mor
al high ground. After all, we’ll have shown the world we’re willing to consider genuine charges that servants of Mother Church—as individuals, Zhaspahr, not as Mother Church herself—are capable of criminal acts. And when we condemn Graivyr and the others, it will be one of those ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ affairs. In the end, we’ll actually be able to turn some of this at least partly to our own advantage.”
“If you can call that an ‘advantage,’ ” Clyntahn muttered. He sat silently for a well over a minute, gazing sightlessly at his own blotter, then shrugged.
“Very well, Zahmsyn,” he said. “We’ll try it your way. As you say,” he showed his teeth in a white smile that contained very little humor, “we’ll have proved our willingness to go the extra mile, to be sure of our ground before we make charges or allegations.”
“Exactly,” Trynair agreed, making no particular effort to hide his relief at Clyntahn’s agreement. “Trust me, if we can establish that, get it fixed in everyone’s mind, we’ll have an enormous advantage in the battle between our propagandists and theirs.”
“Well, in that case,” Clyntahn said, “I suppose it’s time I had Father Dahnyld start pulling copies of Graivyr’s reports. I’ll need them for the investigation, won’t I?”
. VI .
HMS Empress of Charis,
Hannah Bay,
Grand Duchy of Zebediah
Cayleb Ahrmahk stood on the quarterdeck of HMS Empress of Charis once again as the column of galleons wended its way past Grass Island. Shoal Island lay almost thirty miles to the north, and the broad waters of Grass Reach stretched before them. It was almost ninety miles yet to the harbor of the city of Carmyn, and he tried very hard not to feel closed in by the surrounding land.