"No, not a bad man, only a corrupt one." Ailysa drew another deep breath, and her lower lip trembled for just a moment. Then she shook herself almost sternly. "They're all corrupt, and that's why not one of them would stand in his defense. The Writ says all men reap as they have sown, and he never sowed anything strong enough to stand in the face of this storm."
"No," Ahnzhelyk agreed sadly, then squared her shoulders and walked across to the window seat and stretched out along it, leaning back against the upholstered arm at one end where she could look out on the soothing tranquillity of the street once again.
Ailysa followed her, and smiled slightly as she saw the three gowns hung ready for mending. Unless she very much missed her guess, Ahnzhelyk had deliberately torn at least two of them, but that was typical of her. When she summoned a seamstress to repair damaged clothing, the clothing in question was damaged . . . however it had happened to get that way.
Ailysa opened her bag and started removing needles, thread, scissors, and thimbles . . . all of which, except the thread, she reflected wryly, had been made in Charis. One of the things which had inspired Ahnzhelyk to suggest her current role was the fact that she actually was an extraordinarily skilled seamstress. Of course, that was because it had been a wealthy woman's hobby, not because it had been a servant's livelihood.
Ailysa sat in a far humbler but still comfortable chair and began working on the first of the gowns while Ahnzhelyk continued gazing pensively out the window. Several minutes passed in silence before Ahnzhelyk stirred and turned her head, propping her chin on a raised palm as she regarded Ailysa.
"Are you going to tell the boys?" she asked quietly, and Ailysa's needle paused for just a moment. She looked down at it, biting her lip, then shook her head.
"No. No, not yet." Her nostrils flared, and she began once again setting neat, perfect stitches. "They'll have to know eventually, of course. And Tymythy already suspects what's happening, I think. But I won't risk telling them until I've got them someplace safe. Or at least"—she smiled with bitter, barren humor—"someplace safer."
"I could get you aboard ship tomorrow." Ahnzhelyk's statement sounded tentative, but Ailysa shook her head again.
"No." Her voice was harsher. "It wasn't much of a marriage in all too many ways, but he is my husband. And at the end of his life, I think perhaps he's finally found at least a trace of the man I always knew was hidden somewhere down inside him." She looked up at Ahnzhelyk, her eyes brimming with tears at last. "I won't abandon that man if he's finally found him."
"It's going to be horrible," Ahnzhelyk warned. "You know that."
"Yes, I do. And I want to remember it." Ailysa's face had hardened. "I want to be able to tell them how it was, what they did to him in 'God's name.' " The last two words dripped acid, and Ahnzhelyk nodded.
"If that's what you want," she said gently.
"I want to be able to tell them," Ailysa repeated.
Ahnzhelyk only gazed at her for several seconds, then smiled with an odd mixture of fondness, sorrow; and memory.
"It's such a pity he never knew," she said. Ailysa looked at her, as if perplexed by the apparent change of subject.
"Knew what?"
"Knew about us. Knew about how long we've known one another, what we kept hoping we'd see in him. It was so hard not to just take him by the front of his cassock and try to shake some sense into him!"
"We couldn't risk it. Well, you couldn't." Ailysa sighed. "Perhaps I could have. Perhaps I should have, but he was always too busy playing the game. He never heard me when I threw out a hint, never recognized a suggestion. They just went right past him, and I was afraid to be too explicit. And"—it was her turn to smile sadly—"I always thought there'd still be time. I never imagined he might come to this."
"Neither did I," Ahnzhelyk said, and leaned back in the window seat, folding her hands in her lap.
"I'll miss your letters," she said.
"Lyzbet will take my place," Ailysa said. "It will take her a few months to get all of the delivery arrangements settled fully into place, but she knows what to do."
"I wasn't talking about that." Ahnzhelyk smiled crookedly. "I was talking about your letters. Quite a few of the others really do hold my past against me, you know. Those who know of it at all. You never did."
"Of course I didn't." Ailysa laughed quietly, softly. "I've known you since you were less than a year old, Ahnzhelyk!' And your 'past' is what made you so effective."
"But it felt so strange, sometimes, discussing him with you," Ahnzhelyk said wistfully.
"Yes, it did. Sometimes." Ailysa bent back to her stitchery. "In many ways, you were more his wife than I ever was. You certainly saw more of him after the boys were born than I did."
"Did you resent that?" Ahnzhelyk's voice was quiet. "I never dared to actually ask you that, you know."
"I resented the fact that the power games he played here in Zion were more important to him than his family," Ailysa replied, never looking up from her work. "I resented the fact that he pursued his comfort in brothels. But that was his world, the one he was born to. It wasn't your fault or your doing, and I never resented you."
"I'm glad," Ahnzhelyk said softly. "I'm glad, Adorai."
.VI.
Hanth Town,
Earldom of Hanth,
Kingdom of Charis
Captain Sir Dunkyn Yairley stood on the quarterdeck of HMS Destiny, hands clasped behind him while he enjoyed Margaret Bay's brisk predawn air. The sky to the east, beyond the shadowy, still all but invisible bulk of Margaret's Land, was turning pale gold and salmon, and the thin banners of clouds were like high, blue smoke against the steadily paler heavens. The moon was still just visible, peeking over the edge of the western horizon, but the stars had all but vanished, and the breeze moved Destiny along at a steady five or six knots, with all sail set to the topgallants.
Yairley was proud of his command. The fifty-four-gun galleon was one of the most powerful warships in the world, and Yairley had been in command for less than five five-days. His previous command, the galley Queen Zhessyka, had distinguished herself at the Battle of Darcos Sound, and Destiny was his reward. He suspected that the ship would have gone to someone else, despite his performance in battle, if he hadn't also spent two and a half years in command of a merchant galleon. Regular navy officers with experience handling square-riggers, instead of galleys, weren't all that common, after all.
Serves Allayn right, he thought smugly. His older brother had thought that taking a three-year hiatus to accept a merchant berth would be the kiss of death for his naval career, but he'd been wrong. I told him the merchant service experience would look good to the High Admiral, give me that "well-rounded" look he's always so happy to see. Of course, I have to admit that I didn't expect it to look good for the reasons it actually did. Who'd have thought that galleons would make galleys obsolete?
His brother certainly hadn't expected it. . . which was why Allayn had gone back to school to learn to handle galleons while Dunkyn got Destiny. He tried not to gloat too hard whenever he ran into his beloved brother. Really he did!
Sir Dunkyn's lips twitched at the thought, and he sucked in an enormous lungful of air, marveling at how wonderful the world seemed this fine morning.
The ship's bell chimed, sounding the half hour, and Sir Dunkyn looked back up at the strengthening dawn. The land to port remained a blue mystery, bulking against the morning sky as the sun began to lift itself over the edge of the world, but it was beginning to become more visible. It wouldn't be long before Yairley could begin making out details, and he felt a twinge of something very like regret. Within the hour, his quiet quarterdeck would be invaded by others, and a few hours after that, Destiny would once again become captive to her anchor and the land.
And she'd stay that way for up to the next three five-days . . . or even longer, if it turned out Yairley's passenger required his ship's services or those of her Marines.
Don't be silly,
he told himself sternly. She isn't really your ship, you know. King Cayleb is kind enough to lend her to you, and even pay you to command her, but in return, he expects you to do the occasional odd job for him. Unreasonable of him, perhaps, but there it is.
He smiled again, then turned to look at the midshipman of the watch, standing by the starboard ratlines to give his captain sole possession of the weather side of his quarterdeck.
"Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk!" he called.
"Yes, Sir?"
The midshipman came trotting across the deck planking, and Yairley suppressed an urge to shake his head in familiar bemusement. Young Hektor Aplyn was the youngest of Destiny's midshipmen, yet all five of the others, including lads as much as six years his senior, deferred to him almost automatically. To his credit, he seemed totally unaware of their attitude. He wasn't, of course, which only made Yairley think better of him for acting as if he were. It couldn't be easy for a boy who had just turned twelve to resist the temptation to make seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds dance to his tune, yet that was precisely what Midshipman Aplyn had done.
Only, of course, it wasn't really "Midshipman Aplyn." These days, the youngster was properly styled "Master Midshipman His Grace the Duke of Darcos, Hektor Aplyn -Ahrmahk."
King Cayleb had exercised an ancient, purely Charisian tradition in Aplyn's case. So far as Yairley was aware, no other realm in all of Safehold followed the Charisian practice of adopting commoners into the royal house in recognition of outstanding service to the Crown and to the royal house. Only commoners could be so adopted (which was how the Earldom of Lock Island had been created generations ago, Yairley reflected), and they became members of the royal house in every sense. The sole restriction was that they and their children stood outside the succession. Aside from that, young Aplyn-Ahrmahk took precedence over every other Charisian noble except for the equally young Duke of Tirian, and any children he might someday produce would also be members of the royal house.
Personally, Yairley felt quite confident that the youngster was delighted to have been packed off to sea again as quickly as possible. In the Navy, the tradition was that a senior officer never used a junior officer's title if the junior officer in question was a peer of the realm whose title took precedence over that of the senior officer in question. Instead, his naval rank was used, and since young Aplyn-Ahrmahk's title took precedence over that of every senior officer in the King's Navy—including High Admiral Lock Island— he could slot quite handily back into the far more comfortable role of simple "Master Midshipman Aplyn-Ahrmahk," which had to be an enormous relief.
Of course, on purely social occasions, the rules were different. Which probably meant it was a good thing the crew of a King's ship didn't have a lot of opportunities to socialize ashore. And Yairley intended to see to it that the duke spent as many of those rare social occasions aboard ship as possible.
Let's spare the boy what we can, at least until he's, oh, fourteen, let's say. The least we can do is give him time to finish learning proper table manners before he has to sit down to dinner with other dukes and princes!
Which just happened to be one of the things in which Yairley was personally tutoring the youngster.
Aplyn-Ahrmahk finished crossing the deck and touched his left shoulder in formal salute. Yairley returned it gravely, then twitched his head at the steadily solidifying land to port.
"Go below, if you would, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk. Present my compliments to the Earl and inform him that we will be entering harbor at Hanth Town as scheduled."
"Aye, aye, Sir!"
Aplyn-Ahrmahk saluted again and headed for the after hatch.
He didn't move like a twelve-year-old, Yairley reflected. Maybe that was part of the reason the older midshipmen found it so easy to accept him as their equal. Aplyn-Ahrmahk was a slightly built youngster, who was never going to be particularly tall or broad, but he seemed unaware of that. There was a confidence, a sense of knowing who he was, despite his quite evident ongoing discomfort with his exalted patent of nobility. Or perhaps it was simply that, unlike those other midshipmen, young Aplyn-Ahrmahk knew he would never again in his life have to face anything worse than what had already happened to him aboard HMS Royal Charis.
I suppose, Yairley thought more grimly, that having your own king die in your arms tends to help you put the rest of the world into perspective.
* * * *
The man who still thought of himself as Colonel Hauwerd Breygart, Royal Charisian Marines, not yet as the Earl of Hanth, stood at Destiny's bulwark as Captain Yairley worked his vessel carefully through the crowded waters of the harbor. Normally, it wouldn't have been that much of a challenge, but so far as Breygart could tell, every square yard of the harbor's surface was covered by a sailing dinghy, launch, rowboat, skiff, or raft. . . and every one of those ramshackle vessels was packed with the cheering, shouting citizens of Hanth Town.
"They seem happy to see you, My Lord," Lieutenant Rhobair Mahkelyn, Destiny's fourth lieutenant, remarked. As Yairley's most junior commissioned officer, Mahkelyn had been detailed as Breygart's aide aboard ship. He was a personable young man, in many ways, although Breygart couldn't quite rid himself of the suspicion that Mahkelyn was one of those people who kept track of the favors his superiors owed him.
"I'd like to believe it was a spontaneous demonstration of their deep-seated affection for me and my family," the newly recognized earl replied dryly, raising his voice to make it heard through the torrent of voices. "On the other hand, I've had enough reports of Mahntayl's tenure to know what it really is. And, frankly, I suspect they'd be cheering just as lustily for anyone who was going to replace that bastard's sorry arse here in Hanth Town."
"There's probably some truth to that, My Lord," Mahkelyn acknowledged after a moment.
"There's Shan-wei's own amount of truth to it," Breygart—who supposed he really ought to start thinking of himself as Earl Hanth—said bluntly. "And a few months down the road, when I haven't been able to magically fix everything Mahntayl's buggered up, I'm probably going to be a lot less popular with my beloved subjects."
This time, Mahkelyn obviously didn't know exactly what to say. He contented himself with a nod and a small semi-bow, then excused himself with some murmured remark about his duties. Breygart—No, damn it, Hanth, you dummy!—watched him go with a certain amusement.
Didn't want to risk putting your foot in it by agreeing with me, hey, Master Mahkelyn? he thought derisively. Then he turned his head as someone else stepped up to the bulwark beside him, gazing across at the humanity-littered harbor waters.
"Good morning, Your Grace," the earl said, and Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk grimaced.
"Good morning, My Lord," he replied, and Hanth chuckled at his tone of voice.
"Still an uncomfortable fit, is it, Your Grace?"
"My Lord?" Aplyn-Ahrmahk looked up at him, and Hanth chuckled again, louder.
"The title, lad," he said after a moment, his voice low enough to insure no one else overheard the informality. "It chafes, doesn't it? Feels like it should belong to someone else?"
The midshipman continued gazing up at him for several moments. Hauwerd Breygart was not exceptionally tall, but he was a hard-muscled, fit man who'd seen almost twenty years service as a Marine. Compared to the slightly built boy beside him, he was a solid, chunky presence, and he watched the emotions flickering across Aplyn-Ahrmahk's face. Then the midshipman nodded.
"It does, My Lord," he acknowledged. "Captain Yairley's working on me, but there's never been a single noble in my entire family. Not even a simple knight, as far as I know! What do I know about being a 'duke of the realm'?"
"Probably a bit less than I know about being an earl," Hanth said with a grin. "Which, to be blunt, means not one Shan-wei-damned thing!"
"Less than that," Aplyn-Ahrmahk told him with a crooked grin.
"Well, I guess we'll just both have to get used to it, Your Grace." Hanth looked back across the harbor at the somewh
at battered Hanth Town waterfront. There'd been more than a little arson involved in the final fighting against Mahntayl's abandoned mercenaries, and the gutted walls of at least half a dozen warehouses stood gaunt and charred under the morning sun.
One more thing to rebuild, he thought.
"But at least you always knew you were in the succession, My Lord," Aplyn-Ahrmahk pointed out, and Hanth nodded.
"That I did. But, to be honest, I never expected for all five of the siblings and cousins between me and the title to up and die on me. Never wanted them to, for that matter." He shook his head, his expression glum. "I never could convince that idiot Mahntayl that I didn't want the damned earldom. I think that's why he tried so hard to have me assassinated even after the Church gave it to him, instead. He never understood that the only reason I contested his claim in the first place was that I just couldn't stand by and watch someone like him ruin it. Which is exactly what he's spent the last couple of years doing, when all's said."
Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk doubted that very many people would believe the earl's claim that he'd never really wanted the title. Aplyn-Ahrmahk, on the other hand, did believe him.
"I remember something the King—King Haarahld, I mean—said to me once, My Lord," he told the salt-and-pepper-bearded veteran standing beside him. "He said there were really only two sorts of officers—or noblemen. One felt that the rest of the world owed him something because of who he was; the other felt that he owed the rest of the world everything because of who he was. I know which sort His Majesty was. I think you're the same sort."
"That's a compliment I'll treasure, Your Grace," Hanth said, looking back down at the serious-faced youngster at his side. "And, if you'll forgive me for saying so, I think I know which sort you'll turn out to be, as well."
"I mean to try, at any rate," Aplyn-Ahrmahk replied. "And I had a good example. The best example."
"Yes. Yes you did," Hanth agreed, and for just a moment, he decided, all of the proper protocol he and young Aplyn-Ahrmahk were still learning could go to Hell. He reached out, wrapping one arm around those straight, slim shoulders, and the two of them stood there side by side, gazing out at the cheering, shouting faces of the nameless subjects to whom he owed so much.