By Schism Rent Asunder (37 page)

“A moment, if you please,
Seijin
Merlin.”

Merlin paused and looked up in some surprise as Archbishop Maikel laid a large, powerful hand lightly on his shoulder.

“Yes, Your Eminence? How may I help you?”

They stood just inside the door of the chamber the rest of the Royal Council had just left, and Cayleb looked back at them with one eyebrow raised.

“Is there something we still need to talk about, Maikel?” the king asked.

“Actually, Your Majesty,” Staynair said, his tone more formal than usual, “I'd like to borrow the
seijin
for the afternoon, if I might.” Cayleb's surprise showed rather more clearly than Merlin's had, and the archbishop smiled. “I promise I'll have him back in time for supper, Your Majesty. I simply have a minor matter I need to discuss with him, and since I have a pastoral errand to run in the city this afternoon, anyway, I thought I might ask him to come along with me. Just as a precaution, you understand.”

Cayleb's expression tightened abruptly. The attempt to assassinate Archbishop Maikel was entirely too fresh in his memory for him to misunderstand what sort of “precaution” Staynair had in mind. Especially in view of what had happened to the Royal College three days before.

“If you need additional protection, Maikel—” the king began, but Staynair shook his head.

“I'm not really especially concerned about assassins, Your Majesty,” he said with a half smile. “Not this time, at least. However, I do have a visit I want to pay this afternoon, and under the circumstances, I'd really prefer not to draw a great deal of attention to it. Unfortunately, I'd be just a
tad
noticeable if I take along a passel of armsmen. Given the unfortunate events in the Cathedral, what's happened to the College, and the way feelings in general seem to be running, I'd hate for a private trip to visit an old friend who's not feeling especially well to focus any potential hostility on a simple monastery, and it's only too possible I might make certain people think I must be up to something if they realize I'm going there at all. Fortunately, I feel quite confident”—his smile grew broader—“that Captain Athrawes would be more than up to the task of keeping us both intact if I made the trip … incognito, shall we say?”

“Is it really important enough to risk having you running around the streets ‘incognito' at a time like this?” Cayleb asked.

“He's a very old friend, Your Majesty,” Staynair replied quietly, “and his health has been failing for some time now. It isn't just a visit of friendship.”

Cayleb gazed at the prelate for a moment or two, then drew a deep breath and nodded. Merlin wasn't particularly surprised by the king's capitulation, even though the notion of anything happening to Maikel Staynair at this particular moment in the history of Safehold was, frankly, just this side of terrifying. That was probably even truer for Merlin than it was for Cayleb, if Merlin was going to be honest, and after the earlier attempt no one—not even Staynair—could pretend the Temple Loyalists hadn't figured out the same thing. But both Merlin and Cayleb knew nothing they could possibly say would dissuade Staynair from the discharge of his priestly office. If they could have dissuaded him, he would have been someone else … and he
wouldn't
have been so vital to their hopes for the future.

“Very well,” the king said. Then he moved his eyes to Merlin. “Do try to keep him in one piece, please, Merlin. Again.”

Staynair had the grace to wince ever so slightly at the king's final word, but he didn't let it change his mind.

“I'll do my very best, Your Majesty,” Merlin assured Cayleb, and glanced at the towering Royal Guardsman who'd been waiting outside the council room door.

Sergeant Payter Faircaster was the only member of Crown Prince Cayleb's Marine bodyguard to formally transfer to the Guard when Cayleb assumed the throne. Ahrnahld Fhalkhan and the rest of Cayleb's old bodyguards were now protecting Crown Prince Zhan, Cayleb's eleven-year-old younger brother. The change of assignment had been hard on both Cayleb and the men who had protected him for so long, but the security of the heir to the Charisian throne had been a responsibility of the Royal Charisian Marines since time out of mind. Faircaster might well have stayed with the old detachment as well, but Cayleb had insisted that at least one of “his” Marines had to come along … in no small part because they already knew about Merlin's “visions.” Having someone else along to help cover for Merlin's occasional … peculiarities, at least until they'd decided which of the king's new guardsmen could be admitted to that same knowledge, had struck the young king as a very good idea.

Merlin had agreed. Besides, Faircaster's calm, competent ferocity was immensely comforting to the man—or PICA—responsible for keeping the king alive. And having someone around who'd been fishing Cayleb out of scrapes since he was nine years old wasn't exactly something to sneer at, either.

“Payter,” Merlin said now.

“Yes, Sir,” the enormous guardsman rumbled.

“Send a page to inform Lieutenant Ahstyn that you need another man. I think Sergeant Vynair should be available. Then keep a close eye on His Majesty until Vynair turns up. Don't let him get into any trouble.”

“Yes, Sir.” Faircaster touched his right fist to his cuirass breastplate in salute and gave the king a stern glance, and Cayleb shook his head.

“It's always so comforting to realize how much in command I am of all about me,” he remarked to no one in particular.

“That's good to know, Your Majesty.” The exquisite courtesy of Merlin's response was only slightly flawed by the amusement in his strange, sapphire eyes. Then he turned back to Staynair.

“At your convenience, Your Eminence,” he murmured.

*   *   *

“Incognito,” Staynair had said, and “incognito” he'd meant, Merlin thought more than a bit grumpily an hour or so later. In fact, Merlin was more than a little surprised by just how incognito Maikel Staynair could be when he put his mind to it. The archbishop was probably even more recognizable to the people of the capital than King Cayleb himself. For years, he'd appeared every Wednesday in Tellesberg Cathedral, celebrating high mass for the people of the capital as their city's bishop, and he'd been even more visible since becoming the entire kingdom's archbishop.

Despite that, and despite his flowing beard and strong-featured face, he'd faded somehow into near-total anonymity when he exchanged the orange-trimmed white cassock of his exalted ecclesiastical rank for the stark, unadorned brown robe of a simple brother of the Order of Bédard (to which he was still entitled, despite his elevation) and turned the ruby ring of his office to hide the stone against his palm. With the cowl pulled up and his head bent with proper humility, the archbishop disappeared completely.

Unfortunately, that robe was
not
one of the cassocks Owl and Merlin had replaced. Its normal cloth would offer no special resistance to blades or bullets, which was enough to make Merlin acutely unhappy, although he could hardly explain why that might be to Staynair. Which only made him even
more
unhappy, of course.

Nor did he find much to rejoice about in the reflection that a simple brother would scarcely have been accompanied by a captain of the Royal Guard, which meant Merlin had been forced to make some adjustments to his own appearance, as well. He'd left his armor, his Guard uniform, and his wakazashi behind, and he hoped his katana didn't look peculiar enough to attract undue attention. He wasn't certain how realistic that hope might be, however, since the only two men in the entire kingdom—for that matter, on the entire face of the planet—who routinely carried katanas were His Majesty King Cayleb and the famous (or infamous)
seijin
, Merlin. He was also a little surprised by how much he missed his black-and-gold livery after wearing it virtually every day for the better part of two local years.

But the hardest thing for him to disguise was his eyes. Merlin Athrawes' eyes were the same deep sapphire blue as Nimue Alban's, and he had yet to meet a single Charisian with eyes which even approached their color.

I wish to hell these people had at least invented
sunglasses
or something
, he groused to himself as they made their way through the capital city's teeming, noisy, always incredibly
busy
streets. Of course, if he wanted to be honest, he could have done something about the eyes before he ever arrived in Charis. He couldn't simply reprogram their color, but he
could
have used the fabrication unit in Nimue's Cave to make himself a nice brown pair of contacts to cover their “natural” color.

I guess I didn't want to lose that last trace of Nimue
, he admitted to himself.
And to be honest, I still don't … even if it has turned out to be a royal pain in the ass.
And
one I can't just abandon now that everyone and his brother knows “Captain Athrawes” has those “unearthly blue,
seijin
eyes.” Talk about shooting myself in the foot!

His strong suspicion that Staynair was rather amused by his predicament didn't help his mood one bit, either.

“Just how much farther is it to this monastery, Your Eminence, if you don't mind my asking?” He kept his voice low, and Staynair snorted.

“About another fifteen or twenty minutes,” he replied.

“If I'd realized we were going to be hiking halfway across the city, I'd probably have insisted on a little better security,” Merlin observed. He didn't quite succeed in keeping the asperity out of his voice. In fact, he didn't even try very hard, and Staynair chuckled, then shook his head.

“It's not really all that much farther,” he said soothingly. “Besides, the exercise is good for us.”

“Thank you for thinking of me, Your Eminence, but I get quite a lot of exercise, anyway.”

Staynair chuckled again, and Merlin smiled almost against his will.

At least the inevitable mid-afternoon thunderstorms which had swept over the capital earlier had continued on their way without lingering. The air was humid in the rain's aftermath, however, and the fact that it was technically fall didn't seem to have impressed the temperature particularly. According to Merlin's built-in temperature sensors, it hovered right at thirty-two degrees on the Celsius scale no one else in the entire galaxy used any longer.

Fortunately, neither heat nor humidity meant very much to a PICA, and Staynair had grown up right here in Tellesberg. The climate didn't bother him a bit, and if
he
was in need of any exercise, it certainly didn't show in the brisk pace he'd set since they left the palace behind.

“Ah!
Here
we are,” he said a few minutes later, and turned down a side street.

Merlin looked around curiously. Despite the arson which had reduced the Royal College to a heap of cinders and charred brick, Tellesberg was a more law-abiding and prosperous city than many. Even so, it had its … less affluent neighborhoods, and this was scarcely the better side of town. The buildings around them had the run-down look of shops and warehouses whose customers were none too plump in the purse, the odors wafting about suggested that the local sewers could have used a little attention, they'd passed at least two fire department cisterns which were no more than half-filled, and the hard and hungry eyes of one or two of the loungers they'd passed in the last few blocks had convinced Merlin that Staynair had been wise to be sure he had an adequate bodyguard even if no one at all recognized him for who he truly was.

They continued on their way for another five minutes or so, while the shops got fewer and fewer and run-down warehouses and overcrowded tenements got more and more numerous. And then, finally, Staynair turned up one last walkway to a heavy wooden door set into a distinctly battered and modest-looking wall.

Like every major Safeholdian city, Tellesberg was liberally supplied with churches and cathedrals. Monasteries and convents were also fairly common, although most of those tended to be located outside urban areas, where they could help to support themselves by farming. But this particular monastery didn't fit that description. It looked as if it had probably been here since Tellesberg's founding, and warehouses had squeezed so tightly against it on either side that it couldn't possibly have space for anything more than a very modest kitchen garden.

Staynair knocked, and then he and Merlin waited patiently until the slide on the small window in the stout wooden door opened and a monk looked out. To Merlin's surprise, the monk's brown habit bore the white horse of the Order of Truscott, not the oil lamp of the Order of Bédard. Somehow Merlin had had the impression that the monastery for which they were bound belonged to Staynair's order.

The door warden's eyes lit with obvious recognition as he saw Staynair, and the sturdy, scarred portal quickly opened. Merlin had expected it to squeak loudly, given the monastery wall's general down-at-the-heels appearance, but instead it moved with the silence of well-oiled and well-maintained hinges.

“Welcome to the Monastery of Saint Zherneau,
Seijin
Merlin,” Staynair said as they passed through the opening and the door closed behind them. There was a curious note in the archbishop's voice, as if somehow the words meant more than they'd said. Merlin's internal antennae twitched, but he said nothing, only nodded and followed Staynair and the door warden across the monastery's courtyard.

The space inside the outer wall turned out to be larger than Merlin would have estimated from the outside. It was considerably deeper, and it wasn't the cobbled square or packed dirt courtyard he would have expected from the general dilapidation of the surrounding neighborhood. Instead, he found himself surrounded by greenery, ancient lichen-covered walls, and the liquid, waterfall-music magic of ornamental fish ponds. Wyverns and terrestrial songbirds perched in the branches of dwarf fruit trees which appeared to be almost as ancient as the monastery itself, and their soft whistles and chirps made a soothing contrast to the city noises outside the wall.