By Schism Rent Asunder (55 page)

“Father!” The newcomer wore riding clothes. Her hair was windblown, and her eyes were dark, intent, in a worried face. “I just got back to the Palace. They just told me! Are you all right?”

“Fine, Irys,” he said, reaching out his undamaged right arm. “A broken arm, but aside from that, I'm fine, I promise.”

Princess Irys let her father's good arm settle around her shoulders, but she also leaned back against it, gazing up into his face with searching eyes. He didn't know exactly what she was looking for, but whatever it was, she seemed to see it, and her taut shoulders relaxed at least partially.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, you are.”

She put her own arms around him then, squeezing tightly, and pressed her face into his shoulder. He felt the tension flowing out of her, and pressed his lips to her hair.

She's grown so tall
, he thought.
So much like her mother. Where did all the years go?

“Better?” he asked gently after a moment, and she drew a deep breath and nodded.

“Better,” she confirmed, and released him and turned to face the other three men in the chamber.

She knew all of them, of course. In fact, she'd spent more than a little time helping them—and her father—ponder the unpalatable situation they faced. At seventeen, Irys Daykyn was not a typical teenager, and her grasp of the problems confronting them was as good as any of Hektor's older councilors could have boasted.

“They said it was arbalests,” she said, and Hektor nodded.

“It was. Ahndrai saw them at the last minute.” His nostrils flared. “He saved my life, Irys … and it cost him his.”

“Oh, no,” she said softly. Tears brimmed in her eyes for a moment. “He was so
nice
, Father.”

“Yes, he was,” Hektor agreed.

“Do we have any idea
who
it was?” she asked after a moment, with the air of someone who was just as happy to change the subject.

“If you mean who actually fired the quarrels, then, no,” her father admitted. “Phylyp's men have recovered the arbalests themselves, but we don't have any idea who the marksmen were.” He shrugged. “As far as who might have been responsible for sending them, you're just about in time to help us start speculating.”

“Cayleb!” Irys more than half hissed the name. The eyes which had been filled with tears moments before glittered with fury now, and Hektor shrugged.

“Possibly. In fact, I'd have to say
probably
, under the circumstances. I'm reasonably confident it wasn't some spontaneous act of rebellion on the part of my subjects, at any rate. Beyond that, I'm not really sure of anything, though. For all I know, it could have been one of our own nobles. Someone who's afraid of what's going to happen and figures putting me out of the way might make it easier to placate Cayleb.”

“My Prince, you don't really—” Coris began.

“No, I don't really think that's what happened,” Hektor said, shaking his head. “I'm not quite
that
frightened of shadows yet, Phylyp! All I meant was that, as you yourself just said, we really don't know who it was.”

“It was Cayleb,” Irys said coldly. “Who else would want you dead badly enough to try an assassination in the middle of your own capital in the middle of the day?”

“My love,” Hektor said, turning back to her with a crooked smile, “the list of people who would like to see me dead is a very lengthy one, I'm afraid. You know that. At this particular moment, Cayleb would be at the head of my own list of likely suspects. I'll admit that. But it could also have been Nahrmahn. Or Sharleyan—
she's
never made any secret of how she feels about me! For that matter, it could have been Zebediah or one of the Grand Duke's ‘associates.' Or simply someone who hates me for a completely separate reason and figured suspicion would automatically focus on Cayleb instead of him. I've told you before. When something like this happens, you must never close your mind to
any
possibility until you have at least some firm pieces of evidence.”

“Yes, Father.” Irys inhaled again, then nodded once, sharply. “I still say Cayleb's the most likely, but you're right. Until we have something more than automatic suspicion to base our thinking on, I'll try to keep an open mind about other possible suspects.”

“Good.” Hektor reached out to cup the back of her head in his right palm for a moment, smiling at her. Then he turned back to Coris, Anvil Rock, and Tartarian, and his expression hardened.

“I want to know who was really behind it,” he told them flatly. “Use as many men and as much gold as it takes, but find out who was behind it.”

“My Prince, if mortal men can discover that, my investigators will. But, in all honesty, I have to warn you that the odds of success are problematical, at best. Generally, when something like this comes out of nowhere, the investigators either get a break in the first few hours or days, or else they
never
get one.”

“That's not acceptable, Phylyp,” Irys said in a cold, hard voice.

“I didn't say it was acceptable, Your Highness. I'm only warning you and your father that it's probably what's going to happen, despite the best efforts of everyone in this room. We know now that
someone
who wants the Prince dead is willing to try to bring that about. That's more than we knew this morning. I'm not saying it's
enough
, only that it's more. We'll keep trying to find out who was behind it, but in the meantime, all we can do is take precautions to make it harder for whoever it was. And, with all due respect, I think it might be wise to increase your own bodyguards, and your brothers', as well. I don't want to alarm either of you, but if it
was
Cayleb, then removing all of you might very well be what he has in mind.”

“Earl Coris is right, Your Highness,” Anvil Rock said quietly. “We'll all do all we can, but for now, that really amounts to little more than increasing the security around your father—and you and your brothers, of course.”

“And what do we tell everyone else?” Irys' voice was still brisk, but it had lost that tang of old, cold iron. Coris' eyebrows rose, and she snorted. “Rumors must be all over the city, by now,” she pointed out. “By this time tomorrow, they'll be across the Barcors and as far as Shreve or Noryst!”

That was an exaggeration, Hektor thought. It would take the Church's semaphore to carry any sort of message—or rumor—six hundred miles in barely twenty-six hours. Still, she had a point.

“There's enough uncertainty and anxiety swirling around without adding this to it,” she continued. “Especially if all we can say is ‘We don't know who it was' when someone asks.”

“She's right about that,” Hektor said. The others looked at him, and he snorted. “Of course she is! Trust me, the rumors ignorance can come up with will be worse than any possible accurate answer could have been!”

“So what should we do about it, My Prince?” Tartarian asked after a moment, and Irys laughed. It was not an especially pleasant sound.

“May I, Father?”

“Go ahead,” Hektor invited, settling back on his heels, and she smiled grimly at the other three men.

“What matters most is that we put some sort of name or face on whoever it was,” she told them. “That we kill any impression that it might have been some general act of defiance or rebellion from inside Corisande. And who have all of us just agreed is our most probable suspect?”

“Cayleb,” Tartarian replied. Like most men, he had a tendency to forget Princess Irys wasn't yet twenty at moments like this. In fact, she was so much her father's daughter that it could be frightening at times.

“Exactly,” she agreed. “Maybe it was Cayleb, and maybe it wasn't, but it obviously
could
have been him. And it's not as if we have any evidence that it
wasn't
him, either. Given the fact that we're at war with Charis, he'll strike most people as a reasonable suspect, and he's an outsider.
The
outsider, at the moment. Besides, assassination is exactly what you'd expect out of heretics. So announcing that we believe it was him will actually have a rallying effect.”

“She's right,” Hektor said again, smiling at her. Then he looked back at the other three. “It doesn't really matter if it actually
was
Cayleb. We certainly don't have any reason to worry about his reputation, at any rate, so I'm not likely to lie awake at night worrying about whether or not we're blaming it all on an innocent man! And it will have exactly the effect Irys has just described. In fact, aside from the fact that it got a loyal man killed, this could turn out to be very useful to us.”

“As long as we don't close our own minds to the possibility that it
wasn't
Cayleb, My Prince,” Coris said warningly.

Hektor arched an eyebrow, and the earl shrugged.

“Overall, I agree with you and Her Highness,” he said. “Where the political consequences of this are concerned, especially. But even if this does turn out to be ‘useful' in some ways, let's not forget that someone really did try to kill you this afternoon, My Prince. It's always possible they'll try again, and I don't want any of us—especially me and my investigators—to close our minds to any possible suspects or avenues of investigation until we
know
for certain who it was.”

“Of course, Phylyp,” Hektor agreed. “Of course. But in the meantime,” he smiled unpleasantly, “let's turn our minds to how we can most suitably blacken Cayleb's reputation over this, shall we?”

.IX.

Tellesberg Harbor,
Kingdom of Charis

Merlin wondered if Cayleb realized he was slowly, rhythmically shifting his weight from foot to foot as he stood at dockside, surrounded by a storm of banners. Not to mention several score Royal Guardsmen, honor guards from both the Royal Charisian Navy and the Royal Charisian Marines, most of his Royal Council, the bejeweled ranks of what looked like at least half the House of Lords, a sizable delegation from the House of Commons, and every private citizen of his capital who could beg, borrow, buy, or steal a spot close enough to see the most momentous single arrival in Tellesberg in at least the past fifty years.

As a proper bodyguard, Merlin stood impassively behind the youthful king, watching alertly for potential threats. It was, he reflected, as he listened to the harbor batteries' saluting guns pounding out their welcome in spurts of smoke, a good thing no one had yet gotten around to perfecting the sort of artillery with which Seamount was beginning to experiment. A single howitzer shell in the middle of
this
dockside gathering would have had catastrophic consequences for the future history of Safehold.

Of course
, he thought with a sense of profound satisfaction as the oared tugs maneuvered the stately galleon flying the royal blue banner with the silver doomwhale of Charis alongside the wharf,
if the Group of Four only knew, what's actually about to land on this dock
is
going to have even more catastrophic consequences than that for someone
.

He was hard put to avoid breaking into an enormous grin as he watched Cayleb. At this particular moment, the king's mind obviously wasn't on future political and military consequences, despite his commendable job of concentrating on those aspects of the proposed marriage when he'd presented it to Parliament. It was painfully clear that, for now, at least, those consequences had taken second place in the thoughts of a very youthful bridegroom about to meet his bride for the very first time.

*   *   *

Sharleyan of Chisholm commanded herself to stand still and stately on the high poop deck of her galleon. The
very
high poop deck, as it happened. HMS
Doomwhale
was, in fact, one of only four galleons her navy had possessed prior to the ill-fated campaign which had ended in Darcos Sound, and unlike the Royal Charisian Navy galleons which had escorted her to Tellesberg,
Doomwhale
retained both her original cumbersome sail plan and the towering height of her massive, multi-deck castles, fore and aft. Those sleek, low-slung vessels had disposed of those features in their ruthless drive to reduce topweight and improve seaworthiness and weatherliness, and that drive had obviously succeeded. Sharleyan was far from a professional seaman herself, but her captain's envy of the Charisians' handiness had been evident even to her, despite his best efforts to conceal it.

At the moment, however, she was far less concerned with the relative merits of galleon designs than with the young man awaiting her arrival.

I am
not
going to run to the rail like some sort of overeager schoolgirl
.
I'm a reigning queen, for God's sake! I have a queen's dignity to maintain … and absolutely no business having all these butterflies dancing around in my middle
.

She told herself that quite firmly.

It didn't seem to help a great deal.

Now
stop
that! You know why you made this decision, despite the opposition of people like Uncle Byrtrym. Compared to all those reasons, what does it matter what he
looks
like, for goodness sake?!

She snorted mentally at the direction of her own thoughts and glanced at the young woman standing on the poop deck with her.

Lady Mairah Lywkys was the only lady-in-waiting she'd brought along. Partly, that was because one of Sharleyan's first acts had been to reduce the number of ladies-in-waiting which would normally have been retained by a queen
consort
as a deliberate tactic to reduce her nobles' tendency to think of their teenaged queen as a fluttering girl in need of coddling … and subject to a “suitable marriage,” manipulation, or removal. The same logic had applied when choosing the guest list for this voyage, and there'd never been any question as to which of her relatively short list of ladies she would choose. Mairah Lywkys wasn't simply her closest friend among the Chisholmian nobility; she was also Baron Green Mountain's niece.