“You always have such a compassionate and supportive way of dealing with me in my hour of need, Your Eminence,” Cayleb said sardonically, and Staynair chuckled.
“Would you really prefer for me to get all weepy-eyed instead of kicking you—respectfully, of course—in the arse?”
“It would at least have the virtue of novelty,” Cayleb replied, his tone dry, and the archbishop chuckled again. Then he cocked one eyebrow at the imperial couple and gestured at the small conference table waiting under one of the skylights set into the tower chamber’s sloping roof.
“I suppose so.” Cayleb sighed, and escorted Sharleyan across to it. He pulled out her chair for her, then waited until Staynair had seated himself before taking his own place.
“It’ll be nice when you get home, Merlin. I can’t throttle you properly when you’re so far away,” he remarked to the empty air as he sat, and it was Merlin’s turn to chuckle.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promised, “and you can throttle away to your heart’s content. Or try to, anyway. And the trip’s been worth it. We’re never going to get over the hole Mahndrayn’s left, but Captain Rahzwail’s turning out to be pretty impressive himself. Even more impressive than I’d expected, really. In fact, I wouldn’t be too surprised if he turns out to be a candidate for the inner circle in the not too distant.”
“Rushing it a bit, aren’t you?” Cayleb asked quizzically, and Merlin—perched like a cross-legged tailor atop one of King’s Harbor Citadel’s merlons—shrugged.
“I didn’t suggest telling him tomorrow, Cayleb,” he pointed out mildly. “I’m simply saying I think he has the … resiliency and flexibility to take it in stride. And given his new post, it would certainly be useful.”
“Not as useful as telling Ahlfryd would be.” Sharleyan’s voice was unwontedly sharp, and Cayleb looked at her. “I understand all the reasons for not telling him,” the empress went on in that same edged tone, “but we’ve told others who even the Brethren agreed were greater risks than he’d ever be, and there’s not a more trustworthy man in the entire Empire!”
“Besides which, he’s your friend,” Staynair said gently. Her head whipped around, anger flickering in her eyes, but Staynair met them with his normal calm, unflurried gaze.
“That has nothing to do with my estimate of how useful it would be to have him fully integrated into the inner circle, Maikel,” she said, her tone flat.
“No, but it has quite a bit to do with how guilty you feel for not having told him.” Staynair gave his head a slight shake. “And how disloyal you feel for not having managed to convince the Brethren to trust him with the information.”
The empress’ eyes bored hotly into his for another handful of seconds before they fell. She looked down at her own slender, shapely hands, so tightly folded on the table before her that their knuckles had whitened, and the archbishop reached out to lay one of his own far larger hands atop them.
“I understand, Sharley,” he told her softly. “But don’t forget, Bryahn was his friend, too, and it was Bryahn who recommended against telling him. And you know why, too, don’t you?”
Sharleyan never looked up, but, after a moment, she nodded ever so slightly, and Staynair smiled sadly at the crown of her head.
Sir Ahlfryd Hyndryk, Baron Seamount, was quite possibly the most brilliant Charisian naval officer of his generation, and he’d become one of Sharleyan’s favorite people during her original visit to Charis. In fact, virtually everyone in the slowly growing circle of Charisians who knew the truth about the Terran Federation and the monumental lie which underlay the entire Church of God Awaiting knew him and held him in deep affection, although he was closer to Sharleyan than to anyone except, perhaps, Staynair’s brother, Domynyk. No member of the inner circle questioned his loyalty or his intelligence. But Bryahn Lock Island had been right to fear his integrity … and his outrage.
In another time and another place, Ahlfryd Hyndryk would have been called a geek, and he had all of that breed’s impatience with subterfuge and dissimulation. Sheer love of knowledge and impatience to rebuild the technology the Proscriptions of Jwo-jeng had denied to Safehold so long would have been bad enough, driving him to press the limits of what was being introduced, perhaps too hard and too fast. But his wrath at the way the entire population of the last surviving world of humanity had been lied to, been robbed of the stars themselves, would have been even worse. Lock Island had feared that the combination of impatience and fury—and the awareness of how desperately Charis needed every advantage it could find—would have pushed their brilliant, adaptive problem solver into too openly challenging the Proscriptions, defying the doctrine of the Church of God Awaiting, even denouncing the Church itself as the monstrous lie it was. And if that happened in the midst of the Charisian Empire’s war against the Group of Four.…
Merlin gazed out over the blue water of King’s Harbor, at the swarm of ships covering the surface, the hive of activity, so much of which had resulted directly from Seamount’s fertile imagination and compulsive energy, and his sapphire eyes were cold. They dared not risk revealing the truth about the archangels, the Church, Langhorne’s Rakurai and Armageddon Reef. Not yet. Not when such revelations would play directly into the Group of Four’s denunciation of them all as lying, blasphemous servants of corruption. And so, if it had turned out Seamount was a threat to the secret they all guarded, that threat would have to be removed … permanently.
“I swear to you, Sharleyan,” he said now over the com, softly, “the instant I’m certain it would be safe to tell him, I will.” He smiled crookedly. “It won’t be the first time I’ve, ah, overridden the Brethren, if you’ll recall. And if I do it and it turns out I was wrong about the safety factor, I’ll drag him off to Nimue’s Cave and pop him into one of the cryo units until it is safe to turn him loose again.” He watched through the SNARC remote perched on the ceiling above the conference table as the empress looked up with a sudden, astounded smile, and he chuckled softly. “I don’t have room for many people,” he told her, “but Ahlfryd’s one of the special ones. If we end up telling him and it turns out we shouldn’t have, he deserves space in the cave. Besides, that way we’ll know he’s still going to be around when we’re able to begin rebuilding our tech base openly!”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Cayleb sounded more than a bit chagrined.
“Well, you didn’t exactly grow up with technology, now, did you?” Merlin shrugged. “On the other hand, I’d really hate to do that, because he’s so damned useful where he is. You do realize he’s come up with more original departures, even without access to Owl, than Ehdwyrd?”
“Fair’s fair, Merlin,” Staynair pointed out. “Ehdwyrd’s deliberately picking his spots carefully—and giving someone else credit for them whenever he can.”
“Oh, I know that, Maikel. I’m just saying Ahlfryd’s a mighty impressive fellow to’ve come up with so many ideas, and inspired so many of his assistants—like Mahndrayn—to come up with ideas of their own. He’s taken even the ones I’ve ‘steered‘ him into and run with them, generally to places I didn’t expect him to get to without at least another few nudges. The truth is, Bryahn was right about that, too. He’s doing exactly what we need done even without Owl, and he’s teaching an entire generation of navy officers and the civilians working with them to use their brains, push the envelope, and explore the possibilities.”
“So now that we’ve all made me feel better,” Sharleyan said in a tart tone much closer to normal, “perhaps we should go ahead and deal with the original agenda for our little get-together?”
“As always, your wish is our command, love.” Cayleb smiled at her across the table, and she kicked him gently in the knee under it.
“Such a brutal, physically abusive sort,” he mourned, and she stuck out her tongue.
“However,” he continued more briskly, “you have a point. Especially since the rest of you have also made me feel better—sort of, anyway—about sailing th
e convoy despite the weather. So, Maikel. Your impressions?”
“I think … I think Stohnar is going to make it through the winter,” Staynair said slowly, his expression far more somber. “For several five-days I was afraid he wasn’t, especially when the Temple Loyalists in Mountaincross tried to push through the Sylmahn Gap.” He shook his head. “It didn’t seem possible he could stop them.”
“He wouldn’t have without ‘Aivah.’” Merlin’s own expression was as grim as his voice. “Those extra rifles—and the men trained to use them—are what made the difference. That and the food we were able to ship in.”
“The food he didn’t know was coming,” Sharleyan said softly. “I think he’s aged ten years since this started.”
“Probably,” Merlin acknowledged. “And I think he’s going to be a long time forgiving himself for some of the calls he’s made, but thank God for that military background of his. Without it, he wouldn’t’ve made them, and in that case, Maikel’s right—the Temple Loyalists would’ve come through the Gap into Old Province.”
Heads nodded around the table. Greyghor Stohnar had recognized the absolute necessity of keeping his enemies locked up behind the Moon Thorn and Snow Barren Mountains at any cost. If the Group of Four’s adherents had broken out of Mountaincross Province, they would have opened a direct invasion pathway from the Temple Lands into the most densely populated province of the entire Republic … and to its capital. He’d had to hold that mountain barrier, and so he had … even at the expense of sending desperately needed food from the starving families of Siddar City to the troops fighting in the snow and freezing cold of the Sylmahn Gap.
Eastern Siddarmark was far more densely populated than its western provinces, and the southeastern provinces were even more heavily populated than the more northern ones, thank God. Still, there were well over seventy million people in the portion of the Republic which remained under his control, and the timing of Clyntahn’s uprising—and its deliberate attacks on food supplies and the transport system—had been catastrophic. Westmarch, Tarikah, New Northland, northern Hildermoss, western Mountaincross, and the South March were major centers of the Republic’s agricultural production, and all of them had been taken by the rebels or were (at best) disputed battlefields where no one was worrying much about farming. Crop-burning rebels had done major damage to the harvests in Southguard, Trokhanos, Cliff Peak, and Northland as well, before they’d been subdued in those provinces. The lord protector had lost over a third of the Republic’s best cropland and twenty-five or thirty percent of its normal winter food supply, and the disruption of the revolt had sent enormous numbers of refugees streaming into areas which wouldn’t have been able to feed even themselves adequately. Starvation and disease—disease brought on by the breakdown of sanitation in the refugee camps, despite the Book of Pasquale’s stern injunctions, and the weakened resistance of human beings getting perhaps half the calories they actually needed—had stalked the Republic like demons, and that was the background against which he’d had to choose whether or not to reinforce and supply the field army driving into eastern Mountaincross, slogging ahead through snow and ice to reach the outnumbered, starving troops somehow clinging to the crucial mountain gap.
It was a decision he’d had to make long before any response to his frantic pleas for help could possibly come back from Tellesberg. He’d had no idea how soon—or even if—the first relief convoy from Charis could reach him, yet he’d made it anyway, sending every man he could spare, and the precious food to feed them, under his own first cousin’s command. And Sharleyan was right: it had aged him overnight. It had engraved deep lines into his face, streaked his dark hair with thick swathes of iron gray, and turned his cheekbones hard and gaunt. Not by itself, but in conjunction with all the other decisions he’d had to make and the knowledge of what was happening to the Republic’s citizens where he couldn’t reach them at all, couldn’t do one single thing about the privation and terror being visited upon them.
Greyghor Stohnar was a strong man, but he’d sat in his pew in Siddar Cathedral with his face buried in his hands, shoulders heaving, as he listened to the joyously tolling bells and wept in gratitude when that first convoy sailed into Bedard Bay. The schooner sent ahead to tell him it was coming, delayed by The Anvil’s quixotic headwinds, had arrived less than twelve hours before the convoy itself, and the Charisian seamen aboard those galleons had labored until they collapsed, unloading sack after sack of Charisian and Emeraldian rice and yams and corn, Tarotisian potatoes, carrots, and apples. Swaying cask after cask of preserved fish, pork, beef, and dragon out of their ships’ holds and into the lighters alongside or the wagons waiting in endless lines along Siddar City’s wharves. Lightering ashore the milk cows sent to replace those which had been slaughtered in desperation as the fodder ran out and the people starved, and the fodder to keep at least some of the surviving farm animals alive.
Foods like rice and yams were virtually unknown in the Republic, but mothers with pinched, gaunt faces had stood for hours in biting wind and cold, soaking rain to take home a few pounds of the exotic Charisian foods which would make the difference between their children’s lives and death. And as any galleon was emptied, it turned, setting sail back towards Charis, more often than not with a cargo of orphans or the sick to be delivered to Charisian orphanages, hospitals, and monasteries.
It was the largest relief effort in Safehold’s history, tying up almost a quarter of the Empire’s total merchant fleet. The repercussions of that on trade and military logistics scarcely bore thinking upon, yet it had sent enough food to feed over a million and a half people at least a thousand calories a day and keep almost a half-million desperately needed farm animals alive for three months. Three months in which Charis, Tarot, and Emerald would double the land they had under cultivation and labor gangs throughout eastern Siddarmark would put seed into the ground anywhere it wasn’t too frozen to plow.
Too many had died anyway, and more would die still, but Siddar City wasn’t the only place Charisian convoys had landed lifesaving supplies. Trokhanos Province, Malitar, Windmoor, Rollings … Charisian ships had been everywhere, landing their cargos wherever they could find a few fathoms of seawater.
There were those who wondered how even monarchs as legendary for their foresight as Cayleb and Sharleyan Ahrmahk could have known to begin organizing that relief effort five-days before the first messenger from Siddarmark ever reached them. Most accepted Maikel Staynair’s explanation—totally honest, as far as it went—that Charisian agents had begun to suspect Clyntahn’s intentions well before the Sword of Schueler struck. For the diehard Temple Loyalists, there was a simpler, more acceptable explanation, of course—one supplied and endorsed by the Inquisition. They’d long since decided that in addition to all the blasphemies and heresies the world knew about, Cayleb and Sharleyan had sold themselves to Shan-wei—Cayleb in return for his demon familiar, Merlin Athrawes, and the sorceress Sharleyan in return for the power to steal the hearts and minds of even the godliest men and seduce them into Shan-wei’s evil—so of course they could foresee the future as well.
Frankly, there was more truth in that explanation (in Safeholdian terms, at least) than Merlin really cared for, but the vast majority of Siddarmarkians didn’t care how Cayleb and Sharleyan had known. No, what they cared about was that the House of Ahrmahk had begun assembling those convoys of food and medical supplies long before they’d been asked to, and that they’d sent them to the Republic with no strings attached. No demand for payment, for alliances. No political conditions or stipulations. The Empire and Church of Charis had simply sent everything it had the hulls to move, and that was why a strong man had sat in a cathedral and wept as his capital’s church bells rang out the news that even in a world gone mad, there was a realm and a church which simply sent what it had to those who needed it so desperately.
There was an edge of realpolitik to it, of course. No one in Charis could be blind to the gratitude and goodwill that t
he relief effort had bought the Empire. Yet that truly hadn’t been the primary reason Cayleb and Sharleyan had mounted it. A highly desirable second wyvern to hit with the same stone, yes, but Merlin knew that food would have moved north across Safehold’s stormy seas even if they’d known no alliance, no treaties of mutual aid, would ever come of it.
Not that anyone was going to complain—assuming Staynair was right and Stohnar and the Republic survived the winter—over what had come of it.
“There’s no question in my mind that Stohnar’s going to agree to the draft treaty terms when they get to Dragoner,” he said now. “There’s not a thing in them that doesn’t track exactly with his own offer of alliance, and frankly, without us, he doesn’t have a chance of holding off the Group of Four.”
“Especially not with that army Rahnyld’s about to send over the border into the South March,” Cayleb said grimly. “Oh, and let’s not forget that ‘voluntary’ free passage for Desnairian troops Trynair’s about to extort out of Silkiah, either.”
“Agreed.” Merlin nodded, his eyes watching as a trio of war galleons made sail, standing slowly out of King’s Harbor into the broader, darker waters of Howell Bay for gunnery practice. “Clyntahn and Maigwair are at least smart enough to know they have to go for a quick knockout, before we can intervene effectively.”
“How long do you think?” Cayleb asked. “Another month?”
“Probably.” Merlin’s expression was thoughtful. “It might be a little longer—thank God Rahnyld’s army doesn’t have its own equivalent of Thirsk! They’re getting themselves organized faster than I could wish, though, even without that. Desnair’s going to be at least another four or five five-days behind that, unless they do go ahead and ferry a Desnairian invasion force across Salthar Bay to support the Dohlarans.”