His Grace the Duke of Darcos, on the other hand, had no need to command his eyes into obedience. After all, no one was looking at him, so he could gaze unbrokenly at Irys.
Which was precisely what he was doing.
Sharleyan was fairly certain it had genuinely never occurred to Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk that anything remotely like a betrothal between Irys Daykyn and him could ever happen. One of the most charming things about him, in Sharleyan’s opinion, was that despite his elevation to the pinnacle of the Empire’s nobility, deep inside he remained the same young man he’d always been. He genuinely didn’t think of himself as important, as privileged, and even now, he thought of himself as Hektor Aplyn first, and the Duke of Darcos only second. It would never in a thousand years have occurred to him that Irys Daykyn—daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of reigning princes—could see him as anything other than the young man whose barely middle-class parents had sent him off to sea in his King’s uniform when he was ten years old.
Personally, Sharleyan suspected that was largely why he’d been so comfortable with Irys. He’d been deeply attracted to her, but he’d “known” anyone had to recognize his complete ineligibility as a serious contender for her hand. He’d been confident enough of his own noble rank to be perfectly willing to lean on it to allow him to spend time talking with her, but at the same time he’d known she couldn’t possibly see him as any sort of marital prospect. If it had crossed his mind even once—or perhaps it might have been more accurate to say if he’d allowed it to cross his mind even once—that anyone might see him as anything of the sort, he probably would have bolted in confusion. And if anyone had suggested Irys might be compelled to marry him, the notion would have filled him with dismay.
In fact, Sharleyan had been afraid it might do just that even now. Fortunately, she was a seasoned, cunning, and unscrupulous monarch. As such, she’d known better than to announce the decision to him. Instead, she’d let Irys inform him of it, which the princess had done in a fashion which had made it quite clear, even to Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk, that she was anything but dismayed by the prospect.
One of our better notions, my love, she thought at the absent Cayleb. I don’t know if they’ll be as good a match as you and I turned out to be, but the early indications seem favorable. Of course, there is something just a little disturbing about the absolute mindlessness I’m surprising in Hektor’s eyes every so often when he looks at her now. I’ve got a feeling I know what’s behind it, though. He is a sailor, after all.
This time she really did have to raise her hand to hide a smile as she thought about another sailor whose last name was Ahrmahk and the look she’d seen in his eyes upon more than one occasion.
And a very satisfying look it was, too, she admitted cheerfully. She strongly suspected Irys would find herself in agreement on that point in the fullness of time.
While she’d been thinking, Irys had reached the end of the receiving line and curtsied to the archbishop. Beside her, Daivyn bowed, and then both of them kissed Lynkyn’s ring when he extended it. The archbishop was taller than Irys, and those gray eyes were dark, unreadable, as he gazed at her. Then he looked down at Daivyn, immaculately dressed in court clothes, unruly hair momentarily tamed, scrubbed face shining … and sporting an absolutely magnificent black eye.
The archbishop’s mustache seemed to twitch ever so slightly and he put a hand under Daivyn’s chin, tilting his head back and to the side gently, the better to appreciate the splendor of that purple, black, and delicately yellow work of art. It covered his eye, reached up over the arch of his eyebrow, and spilled out over his right cheekbone as well. It was obviously a couple of days old, but time had only broadened its palette.
“Your Highness had a quarrel with someone?”
“No, Your Eminence.” Daivyn was clearly more nervous—or, at least, more visibly nervous—than Irys, and he had to pause to clear his throat, but he never looked away from Lynkyn. “I was playing baseball with Lady Mairah’s sons and some of the other kids here in the Palace. Haarahld hit a fly ball to right off Zhaky’s best pitch—a really good fastball—and Tym caught it. But it was deep enough for Alyk to tag from first, and I was playing second, waiting for the throw from Tym, when Alyk came down the line. I was sort of blocking the baseline, really.” His eyes gleamed in memory for a moment; then he shrugged. “Alyk didn’t stop … and I didn’t duck in time.”
“I see.” Lynkyn took his hand from under the youngster’s chin and brushed it lightly across the boy’s hair. “Did you have it seen to immediately, Your Highness?”
“Well.…” Daivyn seemed to wiggle slightly and glanced up at his sister’s profile. “It was tied, with two out in the ninth, Your Eminence,” he explained, “and after Alyk got to second, they had the winning run in scoring position. And we didn’t have anyone else who could’ve played second. So, you understand I couldn’t possibly’ve gone to the healers just then.”
His voice ended on a slightly rising note, turning his final statement into a question, and this time Sharleyan was certain she saw Lynkyn’s mustache quiver. The archbishop glanced sideways at Irys, and his gray eyes narrowed in amusement as they saw the martyred older-sister’s resignation in her hazel ones. Then he looked back down at the son of the man he’d most hated in all the world and ruffled his hair again.
“I understand entirely, Your Highness,” he assured the boy. Then he held out his hand. Daivyn took it, and the archbishop smiled a bit crookedly at him. “Why don’t you—and your sister, of course—” he looked back at Irys for a moment, “take a little walk with me while we get to know one another better?”
“Of course, Your Eminence,” Daivyn said obediently, and the three of them moved towards the open glass doors looking out over the blossom-laden cherry trees.
Sharleyan watched them go, and then glanced at the other archbishop in the room, standing at her elbow.
“That went better than I was afraid it might, Maikel,” she said quietly, and he smiled.
“I, on the other hand, was quite certain it would go splendidly,” he assured her. “By the time they leave for Corisande with me at the end of the month, he’s going to be heartbroken at seeing them leave. Mark my words.”
“And you were absolutely positive that was what was going to happen, were you? That’s what you want me to believe?”
There was an undeniable, if perhaps unbecoming, edge of skepticism in her tone as she looked at the supreme religious leader of the Church of Charis.
“I am a man of great faith, Sharleyan,” he replied serenely.
“And God told you this was going to work out, is that it?” she inquired even more skeptically, and he shook his head.
“Oh, I never had to consult God about this one, my dear,” he told her, smiling even more broadly as he captured her right hand and tucked it into the crook of his left elbow. “I would, of course, have trusted Him to get it right if I’d had to, but, fortunately, I didn’t.”
“But you just said—” she began.
“I said I’m a man of great faith,” he interrupted her, “which is true. It’s simply that in this case, my faith was placed in something rather more earthly—a certain scamp of a prince.” His smile faded gently, and he shook his head. “My dear, that boy, despite everything that’s happened in his life, could melt an iceberg with a smile. A mere archbishop’s heart never had a chance.”
.III.
Lake City, Tarikah Province, and Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark
Drums rattled, fifes and bugles sang, and the thunder of thousands of massed voices rose in hymn as the long column of marching infantry, interspersed with blocks of cavalry, moved out along the Traymos High Road. The sky was a deep, perfect cerulean, burnished with a thin, high scatter of cloud, and the sun poured down warmth, as if seeking to make amends for the winter past. There was still the tiniest edge of chill in the air sweeping across the city from the twin lakes from which it took its name, for spring and summer came late in
these high northern latitudes, and the seasonal trees were only beginning to clothe themselves in green. High-flying wyverns and birds swept down the wind or hovered motionless, like God’s own thoughts, high above, and the crash of boots, the clatter of hooves, the rattle and bang of wheels, the whistles of dragons, stretched a thick line of energy, color, and vitality across the land.
Arthyn Zagyrsk, Archbishop of Tarikah, stood at his window, watching the Army of God’s departure and tried to feel glad, or at least confident, as became one of Mother Church’s archbishops.
It was hard.
He’d stood here for two hours, and the endless snake of men, weapons, guns, and wagons didn’t seem to have become any smaller. He supposed that made sense—a hundred and forty-six thousand men, with all their draft horses and dragons, would take a while to pass through any city. Not all of them were headed down the Traymos High Road, but enough of them were. It was Bishop Militant Bahrnabai’s main column, and the men in it were overwhelmingly confident of their ability to deal with anything they might meet.
Zagyrsk was, too, if not for exactly the same reasons they were.
He heaved a deep sigh and turned from the window. Father Avry Pygain, his senior aide and secretary, stood waiting just inside the office door, hands folded in the sleeves of his cassock and expression patient. Pygain had been with Zagyrsk for almost five years, since shortly after this madness with Charis had begun, and they’d come to know one another well. The upper-priest was a Chihirite, of the Order of the Quill, and as bright and efficient as one might have expected from that background. His social skills were, unfortunately, rather less well developed, and all too often he had what Zagyrsk’s mother had always called a “deaf ear” all too often when it came to dealing with other human beings instead of reports and tabulations. Still, he couldn’t help being a likable sort, in his occasionally cross-grained fashion, and he provided the clerical skills Zagyrsk knew were not his own strong suit. Unlike the majority of serving archbishops, he was a Pasqualate, and he still wasn’t quite certain how he’d ended up in an archbishop’s palace instead of teaching in one of the healers’ colleges.
And there are times—altogether too many of them, lately—when I pray to Pasquale to send me back to a quiet, peaceful college somewhere far, far away from here, he thought dismally.
“Well, they’re on their way,” he said, and Pygain nodded as if the silence-breaking sentence hid some deep significance, hovering just beyond his mental grasp. Zagyrsk’s lips twitched, and he felt a sudden powerful surge of affection for his aide.
“It’s all right, Avry,” he said, reaching out and patting the younger man on the shoulder. “I suppose we’ll get used to the quiet eventually.”
“Yes, Your Eminence.” Pygain nodded again, then cleared his throat. “I’m afraid Father Ignaz has asked for a little of your time this afternoon, Your Eminence.”
Zagyrsk managed not to sigh. It wasn’t that he disliked Father Ignaz Aimaiyr, his intendant. In fact, he liked him quite a lot and knew he was luckier than many to have him. It was just that—
“Very well,” he said, turning and walking back to the window to gaze out it once more. “Ask Father Ignaz to join me here.”
“Of course, Your Eminence.” Pygain bowed, and Zagyrsk heard the office door closed behind him.
The archbishop’s gray-blue eyes rested sadly on the marching column. He knew the Writ as well as any, and it offered only one prescription for the disease devouring Safehold. But he was a healer, that was all he’d ever really wanted to be, and the thought of where that army was headed, what it was going to do when it got there, filled his heart with grief.
Even the most hardened, heretical heart in the entire world belongs to someone who was once a child of God. To see it come to this, to know it can only get worse before it becomes better—surely that grief is enough to break the soul of even an archangel.
A throat cleared itself behind him, and he turned to see Aimaiyr. The intendant bent to kiss Zagyrsk’s extended ring, then straightened.
“Thank you for seeing me, Your Eminence. I know you have a lot on your mind.”
Actually, the intendant thought, studying his archbishop, the weight rested far more heavily on Zagyrsk’s heart and soul than on his mind. The archbishop felt too deeply, Aimaiyr often thought. It showed in the eyes behind the lenses of the wire-frame glasses, in the thinning silver hair and the lined face with its somehow appealing beak of a nose.
“I imagine we all do, my son,” Zagyrsk responded, and waved for Aimaiyr to seat himself in the chair to the right of the archbishop’s desk. Zagyrsk waited until he’d sat, then settled into his own chair, tipped it back, and folded his hands across his midsection.
“Father Avry said you needed to speak to me, but I neglected to ask him what your subject might be, Father.”
“I have a few … concerns,” Aimaiyr replied. “Obviously our situation here in Lake City and in Tarikah generally has been … stressed by the presence of so many soldiers. Now that the army’s begun its march, I expect much of that stress to ease, although the need to supply so many men and animals in the field is bound to have a significant impact, especially here in the city. But I think we’d all do well to attempt to return to something as close to normal as we can in these disturbed and disturbing days.” He shook his head, his eyes—a deeper, darker blue than Zagyrsk’s—worried. “I realize we can’t possibly return to ‘normal’ until the heresy and schism have been dealt with, Your Eminence. Still, the closer we can come, the more a sense of the familiar—of the right and proper—will help all God’s children marshal their inner strength in this time of need.”
Zagyrsk nodded slowly, although he deeply doubted it would be possible for anyone to pretend things were remotely near “normal” for a long time to come. Nonetheless, he understood what Aimaiyr was saying, and he realized again how fortunate he was in his intendant. The fair-haired Schuelerite was an intense, passionate priest, a quarter-century younger than Zagyrsk’s own seventy years. He was also compassionate—more so, to be honest, then Zagyrsk would have expected out of any Schuelerite.
And despite his position as Tarikah’s intendant, he clearly had reservations of his own about the Grand Inquisitor’s policies. In fact, despite how careful he was about what he said, and even more careful about anything he committed to writing, he’d made Zagyrsk nervous more than once, for Zhaspahr Clyntahn had been a dangerous, dangerous man even before the Jihad. The archbishop was far from certain how a priest of Aimaiyr’s independence of thought had risen so high in Clyntahn’s Inquisition, and he knew the intendant was deeply concerned by the severity of that Inquisition’s current policies, the frequency with which it had imposed the full Punishment of Schueler.
Yet for all his compassion, Father Ignaz burned with an ardent fire against the heresy. He saw only too clearly how the “Church of Charis’” insistence upon independence of thought—the primacy of the individual’s direct, personal relationship with God, even when his understanding of it clashed with Mother Church’s definition of it—must undermine the unity and centrality of Mother Church. That doctrine must splinter once that core direction was broken, allowing error to contaminate the teachings the archangels themselves had entrusted to her care. And in the welter of new devices, techniques, and infernal mechanisms produced by the Empire of Charis, he saw Shan-wei’s talon reaching into the world of men once more. Indeed, much as the Grand Inquisitor’s willingness to use the iron rod of discipline distressed him, he was even more distressed by Clyntahn’s willingness to grant dispensations for the soldiers of God to adopt so many of those innovations.
“I agree that the closer we can come to normalcy, the better, Father,” the archbishop said. “Unfortunately, I question how close we can come at this time.” He shook his head sadly. “While the army was quartered in and around the city, it was possible to forget how empty that city is. Now, even with all the extra stevedores and canal boats, that emptiness is going to become ap
parent to all.”
Aimaiyr bent his head in acknowledgment of the archbishop’s point. The population of the province and archbishopric of Tarikah had been catastrophically reduced over the previous winter—possibly by as much as two-thirds, or even more. With fewer than a million inhabitants even before the Sword of Schueler, it had never been remotely as densely populated as, say, Old Province, and the privation and starvation of the winter had cost its people dear. Many had fled as refugees, despite the bitter winter weather, making their way into the Border States and even into the Temple Lands beyond; others had simply died, either in their own homes or struggling to reach some hopefully safe haven. Desolate farmland stretched for miles around Tarikah’s towns and villages, with no hand to till the soil or plant the seed. No one had been able to take any sort of a census yet, although Father Avry had that on his to-do list, but Aimaiyr knew as well as Zagyrsk that the numbers were going to be heartbreaking when they were finally available.
“I’m sure you’re right about that, Your Eminence,” he said. “In fact, one of the things I’ve been wondering about—the reason I asked to speak to you this morning—is whether or not it might be better to bring as many as possible of our surviving people together here in Lake City or in some of the other larger towns. I realize I may be stepping beyond my own sphere of authority to make such a suggestion, but it struck me that perhaps Mother Church should … encourage that movement. Under the circumstances, with so many homes and farms and businesses simply abandoned, surely Mother Church would be justified in extending her hand over them, seeing to it that they’re protected for their rightful owners, in hopes those owners will someday return, but also put to good use in our present emergency. It would bring together the hands we need to plow, plant, and reap, and surely there are many craftsmen still among us. Yet as dispersed and scattered as our people have become, how can a craftsman find his customers? Or how can someone who needs the craftsman’s work find him?”