A Mighty Fortress (115 page)

“You really
are
in a cheerful mood, aren’t you?” Cayleb observed. “As a matter of fact, yes.” Merlin lowered his hand and gazed up and out of his bubble canopy at the pinprick diamonds of Safehold’s heavens. “All joking aside, I think my little meeting went quite well. I’m certain Gorjah is going to be writing to you soon, Cayleb, and it won’t hurt a bit for him to remember a
seijin
can creep in and out of his bedroom window anytime he feels like it. I don’t think he’s one of those naturally traitorous souls like Zebediah, but giving him a little added incentive to keep any promises he makes—this time around, at least—is probably a good thing, don’t you think?”

“I don’t see how it could hurt,” Cayleb agreed. “Besides, I’m beginning to like ‘
Seijin
Ahbraim.’ And he’s turning out to be quite a useful fellow.”

“That’s true,” Sharleyan said. “Being able to stay in touch with one another wherever you happen to be lets us do things like send you to Corisande with Maikel, but ‘
Seijin
Merlin’ still can’t be in more than one place at a time. I’d just as soon not have Clyntahn—or, especially, Trynair—starting to ask himself where all these
seijins
came from all of a sudden, but establishing that there’s more than one of you—and that all of you are just as ‘mysterious’ as the original Merlin—gives us a lot more flexibility.”

“Exactly.” Merlin nodded. Then he sighed suddenly.

“What?” Cayleb asked.

“I just wish there were a way for us to drop another
seijin
in on Gwylym,” Merlin said, his expression far more pensive.

“I agree, but he’s doing well enough so far on his own,” Cayleb replied, and Sharleyan nodded vigorously.

“I have to admit, I was a little nervous when you told me he was planning on sailing straight into Shwei Bay,” she said. “I was afraid he was displaying a bit too much of that thing you told us about the other day.
Chutzpah
.”

“You weren’t the only one,” Merlin said feelingly.

Gwylym Manthyr was showing a pronounced gift for taking what the military liked to call “calculated risks” . . . at least when they succeeded. They tended to call them something else when they
didn’t
succeed. Of course, Manthyr
had
been Cayleb’s flag captain, Merlin reflected. Having watched his then-crown prince sail an entire squadron through a channel he couldn’t even see in the middle of the night and in a howling gale, it was probably inevitable that his definition of “acceptable risk” should have acquired a certain elasticity.

O
n the other hand, sailing
his
entire squadron through Shweimouth and then clear up the Yu- Shai Inlet was just a bit more “elastic” than would have been good for my circulatory system, assuming I still had one
.

Yet he had to admit it had worked out. Manthyr had made his final approach to the city under cover of darkness, using local fishermen as pi lots. YuShai’s garrison hadn’t expected him until early afternoon, at the earliest; when he’d actually launched his attack on the harbor at dawn, he’d caught them napping.

The local batteries had been more dangerous than they would have been as little as a year before, since the Harchongese had given a high priority to producing fortress artillery to protect their building capacity, but Manthyr had gone in close, anyway, anchored by the stern, and laid down rolling broadside fire from ten of his galleons. In the event, he’d been lucky in several ways, including the fact that the wind had been setting from the east- northeast when he actually attacked. It hadn’t been a particularly strong wind, which had made things interesting for the nine galleons (including
Prince of Dohlar
) told off to attack the Harchongese’s newly built warships when the harbor defense galleys sortied. On the other hand, it had also meant the blinding banks of smoke had built up in layered walls between his ships and the defensive batteries and then stayed there. The smoke screen of his own broadsides had done far more than the storm of grapeshot and round shot with which he’d swept the batteries to protect his galleons and schooners from the defenders.

HMS
North Bay
had lost her mainmast, anyway, and her sister ship,
Rock Point
, had suffered over sixty casualties when two of the new, big Harchongese galleys managed to claw through her broadsides and run alongside. Fortunately, that was about the best the galleys had managed. Not for want of trying or lack of courage, but in the face of such complete surprise, they’d never managed to get organized. They’d sortied from the inner harbor in what ever order they could, coming in piecemeal, and Manthyr’s galleons, despite their own anemic wind- limited mobility, had cut them up badly as they attacked in dribs and drabs. In fact, his squadron had sunk two and captured seventeen of them, and the handful of shaken survivors had beaten a sullen retreat.

All the captured ships had been burned, once their crews had been taken off, which would have been eminently worthwhile in its own right. But Manthyr had also converted half a dozen captured coasters into fire ships, stuffed to the deckheads with turpentine, old sails, barrels of pitch, and every other flammable substance. One had drifted off course when the tiller ropes burned through too quickly. A second had been grappled by a particularly courageous galley skipper and towed clear. But the other four had made no mistake. Their volunteer crews had fired them at almost exactly the right moment and taken to their own boats just before their flaming vessels sailed directly into the closely moored hulls of fifteen Imperial Harchong Navy galleons still in the process of fitting out.

Twelve of those galleons had become total losses, and one of the survivors had been badly damaged. Two more had survived only because they’d been upwind from the initial fire and their fast- thinking crews had been given just enough time to scuttle them before the holocaust sweeping through their consorts reached them. They’d settled to the shallow bottom, with only their upper decks above water, and the Harchongese seamen had managed to keep the still exposed portions of their ships from catching fire. Even so, they were going to be out of service for months while they were pumped out, raised, and then repaired.

It would have been even better if Manthyr had been able to administer the same treatment to Gorath Bay, but, fortunately, he showed no signs of lapsing into outright insanity.

“I agree he’s doing well—extremely well, especially considering that he doesn’t have any access to the SNARCs,” Merlin said. “In fact, the damage he’s already done completely justifies sending him out in the first place. And if the Dohlarans are feeling more confident, after Yu- Shai, the
Harchongese
aren’t. I just wish there were some way we could get him that access.” The
seijin
shook his head. “I’m afraid he’s underestimating how quickly Thirsk’s strength is building up.”

“He may be,” Cayleb conceded. “Unfortunately, as you pointed out to me before Haryl’s Crossing, there are still going to be times when we have information we just can’t figure out how to share with the people who need it. And even though he probably doesn’t realize how
badly
he’s about to be outnumbered, he’s taking it for granted he
will
be outnumbered when the moment comes. When you come down to it, aside from telling him exactly where Thirsk is at any given moment, that’s really all we could tell him from the SNARCs, anyway.”

“I know. I know,” Merlin sighed. “It’s just—”

“Just that you worry about friends, Merlin,” Cayleb said with a soft, sad little chuckle. “We know. Believe us, we know.”

Imperial Palace,

City of Tellesberg,

Kingdom of Old Charis

I ’m sure Father Ohmahr is on his way, Your Majesty!”

It was a sign of just how flustered Sairaih Hahlmyn was that she’d slipped and forgotten the proper protocol here in the Kingdom of Old Charis, reverting to the older, more familiar form of address and forgetting that in Tellesberg Sharleyan was officially “Your Grace,” and not “Your Majesty.”

Not that Sharleyan was in any mood to correct such minor lapses. She was too busy pursing her lips and breathing out—hard—while she squeezed Cayleb’s hand fiercely. The spasm eased, and she dropped her head back on the pillow, panting.

“He’d better get here soon,” she said then, between pants. “Someone
else
is going to be here, whether he is or not!”

“This is ridiculous,” Cayleb muttered, taking a fresh cloth from Sairaih and blotting sweat from Sharleyan’s forehead. “You’re the
Empress,
damn it! He’s supposed to be here—
waiting
—when you go into labor!”

At the moment, he could cheerfully have strangled Father Ohmahr Arthmyn, despite the fact that he was normally very fond of Tellesberg’s leading obstetrician.

Starting tomorrow,
he told himself firmly,
Father Ohmahr has a nice suite right here in the Palace, damn it! I’ll keep the thing handy for the
next
kid, by God! I am
not
supposed to have to send someone six blocks to a frigging hospital monastary when my wife goes into labor!

“Don’t panic.” Sharleyan reached across to pat the hand she held with her other hand. “They’re not all that close together yet, and my water hasn’t even broken. There’s time.” Cayleb would have been happier if her tone had sounded a bit more positive and a bit less . . . hopeful. “Besides, he probably expected Sister Frahncys to give him more warning than this. And it’s not his fault I decided to start doing this in the middle of the night, either!”

“No, but—”

“Oh, hush!” she commanded, and began breathing deeply once again.

The contractions were coming closer together, and she wasn’t enjoying it one bit. On the other hand, it wasn’t as bad as she’d been half- afraid it would be. Not yet, at least. And her mother had assured her that women in her family always had
easy
deliveries. Of course, there was a first time for everything... including
hard
deliveries. And there had been all that morning sickness....“And now that I think about it, where the hell
is
Sister Frahncys?” the emperor demanded.

“Little Tirian,” his wife panted as the fresh contraction eased.
“What?!”
Cayleb stared at her.

Sister Frahncys Sawyair, the Pasqualate nun who’d accompanied them back from Cherayth aboard
Empress of Charis,
was a sister of the Convent of the Blessed Hand, which specialized in pregnancies. Which meant (despite the rote nature of
The Book of Pasquale
’s teachings) that she was a skilled obstetrician.

“What in hell’s name is she doing
there?
” he more than half snarled.

“My fault!” Sharleyan smiled apologetically while he blotted more sweat. “She wanted to go visit the convent there. With Father Ohmahr right here, I told her it would be all right. In fact, I insisted she go.”

“You ins—?” Cayleb began incredulously, then made himself stop and draw a deep breath of his own. “I take it when you say ‘insisted’ you mean
insisted
,” he said instead.

“Of course she did!” Sairaih’s tone was the exasperated one of someone who’d served Sharleyan since she’d been a little girl. The maid shook her head, taking the cloth Cayleb passed to her and handing him a fresh one. “You
know
what she’s like, Your Majesty! Stubborn, always knows best, never listens to anyone, always worrying about someone else, always has her own way, never—”

“I’m sure he’s got the entire catalog, Sairaih,” Sharleyan said dryly. “Not but what you’re right. She did argue, and I did insist.” She smiled crookedly at her husband. “And now that I think about it, I told her
I’d
tell Father Ohmahr she was going. And I sort of forgot to.”

“Of course you did.” Cayleb rolled his eyes and snorted. Then he smiled back at her and shook his head. “You do realize you’re probably the only empress in the entire world who could arrange things so there was
no one
on call when she went into labor? I thought it was the husband who was supposed to be running around like a lunatic!”

“I am
not
running around like a lunatic,” Sharleyan told him firmly. “I’ve just been a little . . . absentminded for the last few days.”

“That’s
one
way to put it,” he said feelingly.

“Oh, hush,” she said again. “Besides, I was really hoping this wouldn’t happen until Maikel and—”

She broke off with another quick smile, and he patted the back of the hand he held and nodded. HMS
Dawn Wind
was becalmed, still three days out from Dolphin Reach. He and Sharleyan had both hoped the galleon would reach Tellesberg with Maikel Staynair and Merlin Athrawes before their child was born. They’d known the odds were against it when
Dawn Wind
made an unusually slow passage from Corisande, but they’d still hoped. And now—

“Um, Cayleb?” Sharleyan said.

“Yes?”

“You remember what I said about my water not having broken?”

“Yes?” he repeated rather more slowly.

“Well, I’m afraid that’s no longer accurate.”

“Wonderful.” Cayleb looked across at Sairaih. “You go out that door,” he said, pointing at the royal bedchamber’s ornately carved panels, “and you find Ehdwyrd, and you tell him I said for
one
of you to find Father Ohmahr
now
.”

His voice was completely calm, but Sairaih Hahlmyn’s eyes widened.