Hell's Foundations Quiver (2 page)

“Watching me?” he repeated. “Watching me do what? I haven't made any special effort to keep my comings and goings here in Siddar City secret from you or the Lord Protector. Or from your agents, now that I think about it.”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, leaning back and crossing her long legs elegantly. She propped one elbow on the chair arm and rested her chin on the palm of a perfectly manicured hand as she gazed up at him like a woman contemplating a problem to which she'd devoted much thought. “I'll concede that at least a part of what gave you away
were
things I could see working together with you and His Majesty here in the capital, but that wasn't really decisive. No, what finally convinced me my absurd suspicions might actually be well-founded wasn't so much the many interesting things you were doing
here
as it was the timing of all those occasions when you …
weren't
here, shall we say.”

“In what way?” The tall, broad-shouldered Imperial Guardsman folded his arms across his chest and raised one eyebrow. “And while I'm asking questions, what sort of ‘suspicions'—well-founded or not—are we talking about?”

“The world went the better part of a thousand years without a single verified
seijin
-sighting,” Madam Pahrsahn replied. “Then, all of a sudden,
you
surfaced … in Charis, of all places. During the War Against the Fallen, not a single
seijin
—not
one
of them, Merlin—was ever reported in remote, backwater, unimportant little Charis. Until Charis was neither little nor unimportant … and there you were, smack in the middle of Tellesberg.”

She gave him a dimpled smile.

“Now, I realize you've always been careful to tell everyone you're not really a
seijin
—or to imply it as strongly as possible, at any rate—but no one's ever actually believed you. Quite reasonably, I concluded, once the reports of your activities came to my ears. Whatever you might choose to say, your accomplishments clearly established what you actually were, I'm afraid. And while the fact that a
seijin
had surfaced anywhere at this late date was remarkable enough, it became even more remarkable in light of the way you'd given your allegiance to the Church of Charis when everyone knew the
seijins
had always been
Mother Church's
champions. What, I wondered when I heard the first reports about your … astonishing capabilities, was a
seijin
doing in the service of a clearly heretical church and empire?”

“May I assume you eventually came up with an answer to that question?” he inquired politely.

“Well, given the difference between the heretical church in question and what that pig Clyntahn and his precious Group of Four had done to Mother Church, it didn't take me long to conclude that you represented a fairly emphatic statement of divine disapproval of their actions.” Her smile disappeared. “And, to be honest, I found myself wondering what had taken God so long.”

He inclined his head in a silent nod, acknowledging the point of her last sentence without responding directly to it.

“I kept as close an eye on you and your activities as I could,” she continued after a moment. “Distance was something of a problem, but as I'm sure you've become aware, when I decide to keep an eye on something—or someone—I'm better at it than most. So long before
Seijin
Ahbraim ever entered my establishment in Zion, I'd come to the conclusion that despite all your protestations to the contrary, you were as genuine a
seijin
as ever walked the face of this world. And whether or not you chose to proclaim any semidivine status of your own, you were clearly on the side of God.”

Her voice turned softer on the last sentence, and the wind roar behind the stillness gusted momentarily louder as their eyes met. She let silence linger for a long, quiet moment, then shrugged.

“That's one reason I was prepared to listen to
Seijin
Ahbraim when he turned up in Zion to warn me to expedite my plans. I think he probably would have convinced me anyway, but I happen to be something of a student of the lore about
seijins
, and I'd already had all of that time to draw my conclusions about you. Those conclusions applied by extension to him as your fellow
seijin
and … associate, and his advice turned out to have been remarkably good in the end. After all, it brought me here,” she waved her free hand gracefully, as if to encompass the city beyond the bedchamber's walls, “where I was able to add my own modest efforts to those of all those people fighting openly to bring down Clyntahn and the others.” She met Merlin's blue eyes very levelly. “For that privilege, that opportunity, I will be eternally grateful to …
Seijin
Ahbraim.”

His nod was a bit deeper this time, almost a bow, and he crossed to the fireplace, opened the screen, and used the tongs to settle two more large lumps of coal into the fire. Fresh, brighter light flared, and he listened to the jubilant, hissing crackle as the flames explored the coal's surface, then closed the screen once more and turned back to Madam Pahrsahn. He raised his left arm, laying it along the small mantel above the hearth, and arched both eyebrows in a silent invitation to continue.

“I will admit,” she said quietly, “that it took me some time to begin to suspect the truth—or at least
one
of the truths—behind your mask, Merlin. I'm quite certain I haven't perceived all of them even now. But something about you seemed very familiar when we first met here in Siddar City. As I said, I have an excellent memory, and a woman in my profession—or in Ahnzhelyk Phonda's, at least—learns to observe very small details about other people. Particularly, if we're going to be honest, about men. Especially about good-looking men who aren't simply courteous but gentle and even considerate with the women whose services they seek from someone like Ahnzhelyk. And Ahbraim and I—well, Ahbraim and Frahncyn Tahlbaht, I suppose—spent quite a lot of time together in Bruhstair Freight Haulers' warehouse and on the trip out of Zion.

“After I met you here in Siddar City, it gradually dawned on me that you reminded me a great deal of him. Oh,” she waved her free hand again, “your hair's a different color, and so are your eyes, of course. Your voices and accents are very different, too, and Ahbraim's clean-shaven, whereas you have that dashing beard and mustache. Oh, and that scarred cheek, as well. But, you know, you're exactly the same height, your shoulders are the same width, and when I looked at you and mentally stripped away that beard and mustache, I realized the chin was almost identical. You really should have taken more care about that, and perhaps about the hands, as well.”

“Oh?” Merlin held out his right hand, looking down at its back and then turning it to examine the long, strong fingers with their swordsman's calluses.

“I doubt anyone else has noticed a thing,” she told him thoughtfully. “I mean, the entire idea's preposterous, isn't it? It took even someone who's been a student of the
seijins
for as many years as I have a long time to admit what I'd come to suspect. But when I did, I started keeping track of exactly when and where Ahbraim or any other
seijin
or suspected
seijin
made an actual face-to-face appearance rather than restricting himself to written reports. I started keeping track of any information I could find about their physical appearances, as well, and I discovered two fascinating things. First, every single one of those other
seijins
was quite tall, well above average in height … just like you. And, second, whenever I could positively nail down another
seijin
's appearance, it always turned out that
you'd
left Siddar City on some mission—generally an unspecified and covert one—for Cayleb at exactly the same time. Aren't those interesting coincidences?”

“Obviously,” Merlin said after a moment, “they aren't coincidences at all.” He considered her thoughtfully, then shrugged. “I trust you'll understand if I don't rush to give you any more information in a sudden excess of enthusiasm?”

Madam Pahrsahn's sudden laugh was deep, throaty, and very real, and she shook her head.

“Merlin, somehow I don't really think of you as someone who's subject to sudden excesses of enthusiasm or anything else!”

“One tries not to be,” he acknowledged politely.

“And quite successfully, too,” she agreed. “But once I'd realized we weren't really seeing all that many
seijins
even now, and once I'd realized how your absence correlated so perfectly with every other verified sighting, I realized there really was only one of you. One of you who could change not just his outward appearance but who he actually
was
as easily as a mask lizard changes color in a flowerbed, and cover impossible distances with impossible speed. And that, my friend, was the final proof you truly were a
seijin
. Just as much as
Seijin
Kohdy.”

Despite himself, Merlin blinked at her chosen comparison.
Seijin
Kohdy was deeply embedded in Safeholdian folklore, but unlike the double handful of “attested”
seijins
recorded in
The Testimonies
left by the Adams and Eves who'd survived Shan-Wei's Rebellion and the War Against the Fallen, there was no historical record of him at all. Not only that, but while the
seijins
of
The Testimonies
were all sober, focused, intensely disciplined warriors for God, Archangels, and Church,
Seijin
Kohdy swirled through the tales about him like some sort of traveling conjurer or laughing vagabond. Or an Odysseus, perhaps. His times had been anything but humorous, yet the vast majority of those tales related as much to his craftiness, his ability to gain his objectives through guile and subterfuge as much as by the deadliness of Helm Cleaver, his magic sword … and to his humor, his weakness for attractive women, and his fondness for a glass of good whiskey. Indeed, “
Seijin
Kohdy's Premium Blend,” one of the most popular Chisholmian blended whiskies, was named for him, and its label featured not simply the magical sword which was inextricably bound up with his name but also an artist's impression of Kohdy himself … with not one but two scantily clad barmaids sitting on his lap.

The stories about him were full of laughter and warmth, stories about someone who was very, very different from the officially recorded
seijins
, and Merlin had come to the conclusion that he was, in fact, a fictional creation. A construct, fashioned by later generations from the legend of the “real”
seijins
and seasoned with more than a dash of the trickster DNA so many of Old Earth's mythologies had treasured.

It would appear, however, that Aivah was entirely serious, and that behooved him to move cautiously.

“Interesting you should bring up
Seijin
Kohdy,” he said after a moment. “Especially since I don't recall him being mentioned in the official list of
seijins
who served the Church and the Archangels.”

“No, he isn't,” she agreed, and her expression was suddenly much grimmer, her tone darker. “All of those ‘official'
seijins
are saints of Mother Church, and he's not listed there, either … now.”

“Now?” Merlin's deep voice was gentler than it had been.

“Now,” she repeated. She uncrossed her legs, sitting up straighter, and her nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply. Then she looked directly into his eyes.

“Who are you
really
, Merlin?” she asked. “Where do you truly come from? And don't just tell me ‘the Mountains of Light.'”

“Where else might I come from, Aivah?” he asked in return, holding out his arms in a gesture which took in not simply the bedchamber, nor even the Republic's capital, but the entire world beyond them.

“I don't know,” she told him very quietly, her eyes deep and dark in the fire-spangled dimness, “but I've come to suspect that wherever you truly come from is also where all of the Adams and Eves who awoke here on Safehold on the Day of Creation truly came from, as well.”

 

.II.

Charisian Embassy, Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark

“She said
what?
”

It was getting on towards dawn—and
much
warmer—in Corisande. The eastern sky beyond the windows of Sharleyan Ahrmahk's guest suite in Manchyr Palace was ever so slightly less black than it had been, and she leaned back against piled pillows in a billow of sheets and filmy steel thistle silk nightgown. She'd actually been asleep for some hours before her husband's urgent com call awakened her, yet her huge brown eyes were anything but sleepy.

“Apparently, Jeremiah Knowles wasn't the only person who left a written record,” Merlin told her wryly. “Mind you, the perspective's a lot different, according to what Aivah—” He paused, and the image of him projected on her contacts by Owl's communications equipment snorted and shook his head. “Oh, the hell with it! I'm going to call her Nynian from now on. I swear, that woman's the only person on Safehold with more identities to keep straight than
I
have!”

Someone laughed over the com net, despite the gravity of the moment. It sounded to Sharleyan like Domynyk Staynair, but it might have been Ehdwyrd Howsmyn.

“That does rather serve you right, Merlin,” Cayleb observed from where he sat with the
seijin
in the lamp-lit sitting room of his own suite in Siddar City. He wore a fleecy robe over his own pajamas—his preferred habit of sleeping nude was contraindicated in Siddar City in winter—but unlike his wife, he hadn't quite dropped off to sleep before Merlin's knock pulled him back out of bed. “What's that cliché you used about that pain-in-the-arse Zhwaigair's improvement on the Mahndrayn?” he continued. “‘Hoist by your own petard,' wasn't it?”