Page 44 of By Schism Rent Asunder

  "I don't know that I disagree with you," Ironhill said. "I see the King's point, on the other hand, and I think he's entirely right when he says we can't afford to tar every single person who opposes the schism with the same brush. If we do that, we'll only succeed in driving the law-abiding members of the Temple Loyalists into the arms of the sort of people who like to play with knives, or throw lit lamps through windows. None of which gives me a clue as to why you're bringing that up at this particular moment. Did you eat something for supper that disagreed with you, Ehdwyrd?"

  "What?" Howsmyn looked at him sharply, then snorted in amusement. "No, of course not."

  "That's good. I was afraid it might be bellyache talking, and I was consid­ering calling a healer to induce vomiting."

  "You can be a rather crude fellow at such a highbrow gathering, can't you?" Howsmyn chuckled.

  "One of the advantages of being born into the nobility, even if I am only a baron. Now, are you going to explain just what all of these cryptic utter­ances of yours are really about?"

  "I guess it's just the guest list." Howsmyn shrugged. "I know there are rules about who has to be invited to something like this, but, damn it, Ahlvyno, it's time we drew a line and told the Temple Loyalists and their sym­pathizers that they aren't welcome guests here in the Palace anymore."

  Ironhill felt his eyebrows arching again and turned to consider the crowd around the king and queen more closely. He could see several members of the nobility who'd expressed at least some reservations about the Church of Charis, but none of them had been particularly vociferous about it. For that matter, almost none of the Charisian nobility had opposed King Cayleb's and Archbishop Maikel's decisions. Not openly, at least.

  "Who are you talking about, Ehdwyrd?" he asked quietly after a moment.

  "What?" From Howsmyn's expression, Ironhill's question had taken him completely by surprise.

  "Obviously someone over there near the King has you seriously worried, or at least pissed off. Who is it?"

  "You're joking . . . aren't you?"

  "No, I'm not. Who are you so worried about?"

  "Well, I don't know that I'd say I was worried about him," Howsmyn said a bit more slowly. "Pissed off, now—that would sum it up quite nicely."

  Ironhill gave him an exasperated look, and he shrugged just a bit sheep­ishly

  "Sorry. And in answer to your question, the person I'm pissed off at is

  Traivyr Kairee."

  Understanding dawned in Ironhill's eyes, and he shook his head.

  "Ehdwyrd, I know you and Rhaiyan both hate Kairee. For that matter, I'm not too fond of him myself. But he is one of the dozen or so wealthiest men in the Kingdom. Not up to your weight, perhaps, or to Rhaiyan's, but, then, you two tend to be in a class by yourselves. He's certainly wealthy enough to put him on that 'have-to-invite' list of yours, though. And he's connected by marriage to something like a quarter of the peerage, as well."

  "He's a moneygrubbing bastard," Howsmyn said flatly. "He doesn't give a solitary damn about the men and women working for him, and his idea of trade is to produce his product as cheaply and as poorly as he can get away with and sell it for the most he can squeeze out of his customers. I wouldn't trust him to look after my dog for me while I was out of town for an after­noon."

  Ironhill's eyebrows went up yet again at the cold, bitter loathing in Howsmyn's voice. He'd known about the bad blood between Traivyr Kairee and Ehdwyrd Howsmyn for years, of course. Everyone in Tellesberg knew about that. But this was a new level of hostility, and it worried him.

  "What's brought this on just now?" he asked, turning to look back at the crowd around the king and queen.

  Kairee seemed to be keeping his distance from the royal pair, the baron noticed. He was part of the crowd clustered around them, but he'd settled for the outer fringes of that crowd, where he stood in conversation with a hand­ful of others. Several other wealthy Tellesberg businessmen were clustered around him, and they'd done their best to shanghai several of the more senior Chisholmians who'd accompanied Sharleyan to Charis. From the look of them they were busy trying to impress the visitors with what desirable avenues of investment their businesses represented. One or two of the Chisholmians, including the queen's uncle, looked as if they would vastly have preferred being somewhere else, but good manners precluded them from simply brushing the Charisians off.

  "I suppose most of it's coming from the 'accident' in his manufactory this morning," Howsmyn conceded.

  "What sort of accident?" Ironhill turned back to his friend, and Howsmyn's lips twisted in disgust.

  "The sort of accident someone like him attracts like a lodestone draws iron filings. He doesn't train his people properly, he doesn't worry about the dangers of the machinery around them, and he prefers 'hiring' children because he can get them so much more cheaply. And he managed to get three of them killed today. A pair of brothers—ten and eleven, if you please—and their fourteen-year-old cousin who tried to get them out of the shafting."

  "I hadn't heard about that," Ironhill said quietly.

  "And the odds are that you wouldn't have, if you and I weren't having this conversation," Howsmyn replied bitterly. "After all, he's scarcely the only one who uses children, now is he? That's exactly why Rhaiyan and I fought so hard to get the laws against hiring children through the Council. And why we were both so unhappy about delaying their effective date to provide an 'ad­justment period.' "

  Howsmyn looked as if he were tempted to spit on the polished marble floor, and Ironhill sighed.

  "I understand, and I was on your side, if you'll recall. But there truly was some point to the argument that yanking everyone under the age of fifteen out of the manufactories is going to cause a lot of dislocation. And whether you like it or not, Ehdwyrd, it's also true that a lot of households who depend in full or in part on the wages their children bring home are going to get hurt along the way."

  "I didn't say it would be easy, and neither Rhaiyan nor I ever argued that it would be painless. But it needs to be done, and Kairee is a prime example of why. Look at him—just look! Do you see a single shadow of concern on his face? And do you think for a moment that he's prepared to pay any sort of pension to those three youngsters' families for their deaths? Why should he? Until the child labor laws go into effect, there'll always be more where they came from."

  The cold, bitter hatred in Howsmyn's voice was stronger than poison, and Ironhill shifted a bit uncomfortably. He couldn't dispute anything Howsmyn had just said. For that matter, he agreed with Howsmyn's position in general, although he sometimes thought his friend might take it to something of an extreme, trying to move too far too quickly. And there were those in the Charisian business community who took a considerably more jaundiced view of Howsmyn's and Rhaiyan Mychail's crusade to improve working conditions in their manufactories than Ironhill did. "Bleeding heart" was one of the terms bandied about from time to time, and many a businessman had been heard to mutter about the disastrous effect the policies they advocated would inevitably have on the kingdom's economy.

  Which, given the fact that Ehdwyrd and Rhaiyan routinely show the greatest returns on their enterprises of anyone in Charis, is particularly stupid of them, the baron conceded to himself. Still . . .

  "I didn't know about the accident," he said again, quietly. "I can see exactly why that would make you angry. For that matter, it makes me pretty damned angry, now that I know. But how does that tie in with the Temple Loyalists?"

  "You really ought to sit down and discuss that with Bynzhamyn Raice," Howsmyn told him. "I'm sure that by now Bynzhamyn must have quite a dossier on our good friend Traivyr."

  "Why?" Ironhill's eyes narrowed.

  "Because the same bastard who couldn't care less about workers getting themselves killed in his manufactories is outraged by the very notion of our 'godless apostasy' in daring to tell the Group of Four that we're disinclined to let them burn our homes over our heads. It turns out that we've damned every soul
in Charis to an eternity with Shan-wei in Hell, to hear him tell it. Amazing how much more concerned he is over his workers' souls than over their physical well-being. Do you suppose that has anything to do with the fact that he's not going to have to pick up the ticket for their admission to Heaven?"

  The bite in Howsmyn's voice could have peeled paint off a wall, and Ironhill frowned. Traivyr Kairee had always been very much a part of the religious establishment. Given his normal business practices and the way he treated his employees, however, Ironhill had always assumed his attachment to the Church stemmed from the amount of business and patronage it con­trolled rather than from any genuine sense of piety.

  "Just how openly has he been expressing his views?" the Keeper of the Purse asked.

  "Not quite as openly as he was," Howsmyn acknowledged. "Right af­ter Cayleb arrested Ahdymsyn and named Maikel Archbishop, he was a lot more vociferous. Since then, he's pulled back a notch or two, especially since the assassination attempt. I don't think he's talking about it very much in public at all, anymore. Unfortunately, I can't quite avoid moving in the same circles he does—not entirely—and people who know both of us tend to talk. Believe me, he hasn't changed his position, Ahlvyno. He's just been cautious enough to go at least a little underground with it. I doubt he's fooling Bynzhamyn's investigators into thinking he's changed his mind, but just look at him smiling and nodding over there. I don't like the thought of letting someone with his sympathies into stabbing range of the King."

  "I doubt he's prepared to take it quite that far," Ironhill said slowly. "If nothing else, it would take more guts than I've ever seen him display."

  "Maybe not. But what he would damned well do is to run and tell his fel­low Temple Loyalists anything he manages to pick up at Court—or anywhere else, for that matter."

  "Now that, I could see him doing," Ironhill admitted. He frowned across the ballroom at Kairee for several more seconds, then grimaced.

  "Before it slips my mind, Ehdwyrd, let me thank you for how thor­oughly you've destroyed my limited enjoyment of the evening."

  "Think nothing of it," Howsmyn said solemnly. "After all, that's what friends are for."

  "And don't think I won't find a way to return the favor," Ironhill warned him. "On the other hand," he continued more gravely, "you've given me quite a bit to think about. Kairee is bidding on several of the Crown's current contracts. In fact, unless I'm mistaken, he's probably the low bidder on at least two of them . . . including one for five thousand of the new rifles. Under the circumstances, I think it might behoove me to consider whether or not I want someone with his attitude that deep inside what we're doing."

  "I think it might, indeed," Howsmyn agreed.

  "I don't know how the King is going to react to the notion," Ironhill warned him. "He's serious about this not penalizing anyone over matters of conscience as long as they haven't violated any laws."

  "Ahlvyno, I respect Cayleb deeply. More than that, I'm ready to follow him anywhere he leads. But he's still a very young man, in very many ways. I understand his logic in refusing to adopt repressive measures, and I under­stand Maikel's position on the consciences of individuals. That doesn't mean I think they're right. Or it might be better to say I don't think they're entirely right. At some point, they're going to have to start making some precautionary decisions based on what amounts to suspicion. I'm not talking about arrests, or arbitrary imprisonments, and God knows I'm not talking about executions. But they've got to start protecting themselves against others like Kairee.

  "I'll be the first to admit that the intensity of my . . . dislike for him is driving my suspicions where he's concerned, to some extent, at least. And, like you, I don't think he's got the courage to risk dying for his beliefs. But there could be others who do have the courage . . . and who do a better job of hiding just how much they disagree with what we're doing here in Charis. Those are the ones that worry me, Ahlvyno."

  Ehdwyrd Howsmyn looked into his friend's eyes and shook his head, his eyes dark.

  "Those are the ones that worry me," he repeated.

  .XIII.

  City of Ferayd,

  Ferayd Sound,

  Kingdom of Delferahk

  How may I help you, My Lord Bishop?" Sir Vyk Lakyr asked courte­ously as Bishop Ernyst Jynkyns was shown into his office near the Fer­ayd waterfront. Father Styvyn Graivyr, Bishop Ernyst's intendant, followed on the bishop's heels, somber in the green cassock of an upper-priest bearing the sword and flame badge of the Order of Schueler.

  Lakyr felt more than a little uneasy over what might have brought Jynkyns to see him. He was neither the mayor of Ferayd, nor the governor of the dis­trict in which the port city lay, with either of whom the Bishop of Ferayd nor­mally might be expected to have business. What he was, was the senior officer of Ferayd's military garrison, which, given events elsewhere in the world of late, helped to explain his uneasiness.

  "I've already visited the Mayor, Sir Vyk," Jynkyns said. Lakyr's anxiety clicked up another few notches, although he kept his expression merely po­litely attentive. "I'm sure you'll be hearing from him—and quite probably from the Governor, as well—shortly. Since, however, this matter directly concerns Mother Church, I thought it would be best if I came and discussed it with you in person, as well."

  "I see," Lakyr said. Then he paused and shook his head. "Actually, My Lord, I don't see. Not yet, at least."

  "That's honest, at any rate, Sir Vyk." Jynkyns smiled. It was a brief smile, and his face quickly sobered once again.

  "In point of fact, Sir Vyk," he said, "I'm here on the direct instructions of Chancellor Trynair and Grand Inquisitor Clyntahn."

  Lakyr felt his facial muscles congeal, but he simply nodded.

  "The Office of Inquisition, and the Council of Vicars, have determined that the pernicious doctrines, misrepresentations, blasphemies, and lies being spread by the apostate heretics of Charis are even more poisonous and corrupt­ing to all of God's people than was at first believed," Jynkyns said. Something in the bishop's tone sounded to Lakyr like a man who wasn't in complete agree­ment with what he was required to say, but the prelate went on unflinchingly.

  "Because of the corrosiveness of the blasphemous teachings of the so-called 'Church of Charis,' the Grand Inquisitor has determined that it is in­cumbent upon him to limit their spread by any means possible. And, since it has been well established that the merchant ships of the Kingdom of Charis carry its heretical teachings with them wherever they may go, as witness the copies of the apostate Staynair's falsehood-riddled 'letter' to His Holiness which have been so broadly distributed, Grand Inquisitor Clyntahn has re­solved to close all ports of all God-fearing realms against their entry and the seduction of their lies. Accordingly, you are to take steps to close Ferayd to them in future . . . and to seize and intern any Charisian-flag vessels cur­rently in the port. According to my own dispatches, the King is in agreement with the Chancellor and the Grand Inquisitor in this matter. Mother Church has made the semaphore available to him, and I believe you will be receiving confirmation of these instructions from him shortly."

  Lakyr felt as if someone had just punched him unexpectedly. For a moment, he could only stare at Jynkyns, unable to immediately comprehend what the bishop had said. Then his brain started working again, and he wondered why he'd felt surprised.

  Because this is going to effectively destroy Ferayd's economy, that's why, a stubborn voice said in the back of his brain. The city had grown wealthy and powerful because it was the major port of the Kingdom of Delferahk . . . and because its relative proximity to Charis made it a natural transshipment point for cargoes from and to ports all over the west coast of Howard, as well. It's like spanking a baby with an ax!

  "If those are my orders from King Zhames and from Mother Church, My Lord Bishop," he said, "I will, of course, carry them out to the best of my abil­ity. However, I feel I should point out that there are at least twenty-five Charisian-flag vessels in the harbor at this very mo
ment. For that matter, there are probably more than that; I haven't checked with the harbormaster lately, but there have been more of them even than usual since . . . ah, since that business in Darcos Sound." He cleared his throat a bit nervously, then continued. "Not only that, but at least half of them are lying to anchor, waiting for dockside berths, not tied up alongside one of the wharves. That's going to make them rather difficult to seize if they realize what's happening and try to make sail."

  "You'll have the assistance of several galleys," Father Styvyn said rather abruptly. A flicker of annoyance flashed across Jynkyns' face and his lips pressed firmly together for perhaps a single heartbeat, but he didn't rebuke Graivyr for inserting himself into the conversation.

  Of course he didn't, Lakyr thought. Graivyr's not exactly noted for his humility and easygoing temperament at the best of times. God only knows what he's likely to report to the Temple if he decides someone—even the Bishop—is obstructing the Grand Inquisitor's decrees. Which is a point I'd better bear in mind, as well.

  "That will undoubtedly help a great deal, Father," he said aloud. "It's still going to be tricky, though. We'll do the best we can, I assure you, but it's entirely possible that at least a few of them will evade us."

  "Then sink them if they try," Graivyr said coldly.

  "Sink them if there's no other way to stop them," Jynkyns corrected qui­etly. The look Graivyr gave him was not the sort Lakyr was accustomed to seeing a mere upper-priest give a bishop, but Jynkyns met it levelly.

  "Of course that's what I meant, My Lord," the intendant said after a brief hesitation.