How Firm a Foundation (36 page)

Suwyl considered himself as Charisian as the next man, but he’d lived here in Siddar City for almost thirty years. He was part of the city, a known man, respected and listened to throughout the business community, not just in the Quarter, with contacts at the highest level of the government. Or at least he was for now.
There was no telling how long it would continue to be true, though, and it was the maniacs like Staynair and “Emperor” Cayleb who were to blame.

Remember what the healers keep telling you about your temper, Tobys
, he reminded himself.
The last thing you need is to work yourself into an apoplectic fit over things you can’t do anything about anyway
.

He drew a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled
slowly. His wife Zhandra had taught him the technique, and it actually worked. Sometimes, anyway.

Fortunately, this was one of the sometimes, and he felt his anger ease. A business colleague nodded to him in passing, and he managed to nod back with a genuine smile. Then he accepted a goblet of wine from one of Pahrsahn’s servants and sipped.

At least the woman’s taste in wine is as good as her
taste in music,
he reflected morosely.
That’s something, if I’m going to be stuck here all night anyway
.

He took another sip and began easing his way through the crowd, looking for his wife.

*   *   *

“Good evening, Aivah,” a quiet voice said, and Aivah Pahrsahn turned to smile at the silver-haired man who didn’t happen to be wearing a cassock this evening.

“And good evening to you, too, Zhasyn,”
she said, tactfully avoiding any last names or ecclesiastic titles. “You are aware the Seneschal and his wife are both attending tonight, aren’t you?” she added teasingly.

“I assure you, I’ll stay out of Lord Daryus’ way,” he replied with a smile. “Although according to my sources, he’ll probably be going pretty far out of his way himself to avoid noticing me. May I ask if your … negotiations
with him have prospered?”

“Oh, I’m sure both the Republic and I will be making a great deal of money, Zhasyn,” she assured him. “And it really won’t hurt for Hahraimahn’s foundries to get a small infusion of capital at a time like this.”

“Small?” He raised his eyebrows in polite incredulity, and she laughed.

“Perhaps not so small on the scale of individuals,” she acknowledged, “but still relatively
small on the scale of entire realms. Indeed,” her smile faded slightly, “small enough I think there’s an excellent chance none of Clyntahn’s eyes or ears will realize it’s even been made. For a while, at least.”

Zhasyn Cahnyr nodded, although his eyes were worried. “Madam Pahrsahn’s” investment was nowhere near so cut and dried as she chose to pretend, and she was playing a more dangerous game
than she was willing to admit. He was less certain than she that the Inquisition wouldn’t get wind of a “private investment” which amounted to the purchase of several thousand rifled muskets and bayonets. More than that, he was more than a little frightened of exactly what she intended to do with them once she had them.

Perhaps it’s just as well she hasn’t enlightened you on that particular point
, he told himself dryly.
You’d probably worry even more if you
did
know what she was going to do with them!

“You have made it clear to your ‘special guests’ that there’s a degree of risk involved here, haven’t you?” he asked now, changing the subject.

“Of course I have, Zhasyn.” She smiled and touched his cheek gently. “I admire and respect you, my friend, but I’m not going to throw any lambs
to the slash lizards without due consideration. I’m very careful about who I approach with your invitation, and after the initial flirtation—I’d be tempted to say ‘seduction’ if it wouldn’t seem too much like a bad jest, given my previous vocation—I’m very careful to warn them about the dangers. And that’s why I send them to you only one or two at a time. We can’t avoid letting you and me know who
they are, but we can at least protect their identities from anyone else.”

“Forgive me.” He smiled back and cupped his left hand lightly over the fingers on his cheek. “I forget sometimes how long you’ve been doing this sort of thing. I should know better than to try to teach such a mistress of her art.”

“‘Mistress of her art’?” She shook her head, eyes dancing. “And here I went to such lengths
to avoid any double entendres!”

“My dear, I know it amuses you to try, but you’re really not going to shock me or offend me by throwing your past into my face,” he pointed out.

“I know. But you’re right, it does amuse me. And it probably says something unfortunate about me, as well.” She shook her head, still smiling. “My initial involvement in this sort of thing was what you might call a reaction
against the high clergy, you know. I can’t quite seem to forget that even though you’re not like the vast majority of your ecclesiastic brethren, you
are
an archbishop. I think that’s why I feel such a compulsion to keep trying.”

“As long as it amuses you,” he said, then looked across the room. “Not to change the subject—although that’s really exactly why I’m doing it—who’s that youngster with
Sharghati?”

She turned to follow the direction of his glance.

“Which one? The younger of the two is Byrk Raimahn. He’s Claitahn Raimahn’s grandson, and I strongly suspect him of harboring Reformist thoughts. In fact, I’m not so sure he’d be happy stopping short of Church of Charis-style thinking if he had his druthers, although he’s far too astute and too well informed to come out and say anything
of the sort. The fellow with him is Raif Ahlaixsyn. He’s about ten years older than young Raimahn and a Siddarmarkian. I’ve met his father. The family’s got money, and I think they’d really prefer to sit on the sidelines, but I’m not sure about Raif. Not yet.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I think there’s some potential there, but given his family connections, I’m being particularly cautious about
exploring it.” She shrugged. “In the meantime, he’s really quite a good poet and making him a more or less permanent fixture at my parties is something of a social coup.”

“You actually enjoy this, don’t you?” he asked. She looked back at him, and he shrugged. “I mean
all
of it. The scheming, outwitting your enemies, laying the evil low, the dancing on the edge of the sword blade—not just all
of that, but the parties and the gaiety, too. You do, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, Zhasyn!” She seemed surprised by the question. “It’s what I do. Oh,” her eyes hardened, although her smile never wavered, “don’t think for one moment that I’m not going to dance in that pig Clyntahn’s blood the day Cayleb and Sharleyan take his head. And string up the rest of the Group of Four, and the entire damned
vicarate—
what’s left of it—for that matter. Never underestimate that side of me, Zhasyn, or you may get hurt. But the rest?” The hardness disappeared and her eyes danced once more. “It’s the grandest game in the world, my friend! Beside this, anything else would be only half alive.”

He gazed at her for a moment, then shook his head, and she laughed.

“Take yourself off to the private salon now,
Zhasyn,” she told him. “Your first meeting’s scheduled to begin in about ten minutes. And in the meantime,” she smiled brilliantly, “I have to go have a word with the Seneschal.”

.II.

The Prison Hulks, and HMS
Chihiro
, 50, Gorath Bay, Kingdom of Dholar

“How is he this morning, Naiklos?” Sir Gwylym Manthyr asked, turning his back on the vista of Gorath Bay.

“Not as well as he pretends, Sir,” Naiklos Vahlain replied.

The slight, dapper valet joined the admiral at the forecastle rail and stroked his mustache gently as he, too, looked out across the bay. The sky was a
blue bowl overhead, dotted with white cloud puffs, and a brisk breeze—cool, but without the bitter bite of the winter just past—blew across the deck. Wyverns and seabirds rode the breeze, their cries and whistles faint, and three-foot waves gave the deck underfoot a slight pitch as the ship’s anchor held her head to the wind.

Not that the roofed-over obsolete coastal galley was much of a ship,
anymore, Manthyr reflected, gazing once more across the bay at the hateful sight of the city of Gorath’s tall stone walls. He’d had altogether too much opportunity to examine those walls over the last seven months. He’d spent endless hours picturing how vulnerable they would be to modern artillery … and regretting the fact that he’d never have the chance to see that vulnerability demonstrated.

He turned away from the familiar lava-flow anger of that thought, not that the contemplation of his remaining “command” was any more appealing. Lywys Gardynyr, the Earl of Thirsk, had done his best for his prisoners—better, to be honest, than Manthyr had anticipated, after the unyielding terms then-Crown Prince Cayleb had inflicted upon
him
after the Battle of Crag Reach—but he’d faced certain
limitations. The greatest of which was that he appeared to be the only Dohlaran aristocrat with anything remotely resembling a sense of honor. The others were too busy hating all Charisians for the crushing humiliation of the Battles of Rock Point and Crag Reach. Either that, or they were Temple Loyalists too busy sucking up to the Inquisition—or both—to worry about little things like the proper treatment
of honorably surrendered prisoners of war.

Manthyr knew his own sense of failure and helplessness when he contemplated the probable future of the men and officers he’d commanded only made his bitterness worse. But when he looked around the moldering old galleys which had been converted into prison hulks to house his personnel, when he considered how grudgingly their needs were met, how meager
their rations were, how little concern even the Order of Pasquale had demonstrated for his wounded and sick, it was hard to feel anything
except
bitterness.

Especially when you know the only thing standing between your people and the Inquisition is Thirsk and—who would have believed it?—a
Schuelerite
auxiliary bishop
, he thought.

He wasn’t the only Charisian that bitterness was poisoning, he
reminded himself. He and his surviving officers did all they could to maintain morale, but it was hard. Charisian seamen by and large were far from stupid, and even the youngest surviving ship’s boy could figure out what was going on. Penned up in the drab, damp, barren sameness of their floating prisons day after day; denied the right to so much as send letters home to tell their families they were
still alive (so far, at least); poorly fed; without exercise; with no warm clothing against a winter which would have been bitterly cold for anyone, far less men from their semi-tropical homeland, it was scarcely surprising when even Charisians found it difficult to pretend to one another that they couldn’t see what was coming.

Which is one reason we’ve got so much sickness in the hulks,
Manthyr
told himself bitterly.
Not that there aren’t plenty of other reasons. Aside from Thirsk and Maik none of these people give a good goddamn about whether or not heretic Charisians are covered by Pasquale’s Law. Hell, most of them probably figure “heretics” don’t have any
right
to worry about Pasquale’s commands! They’re sure as hell not bothering themselves to provide the proper diet his law decrees,
anyway. No wonder we’re actually seeing scurvy among the men! And when you crank that kind of so-called food into the living conditions—such as they are—and the despair, it’s a wonder
everyone
isn’t down sick!

His jaw muscles ached, and he forced himself to deliberately unclench them. None of their chaplains had survived the final battle, which was probably just as well, since the Inquisition
would most certainly have demanded (and received) possession of any heretical priests who fell into their hands. Manthyr liked to think that at least some of the Dohlaran clergy would have been interested in meeting the spiritual needs of his men, but they’d been forbidden to by Wylsynn Lainyr, the Bishop Executor of Gorath, and Ahbsahlahn Kharmych, his intendant. If the rumor mill was to be believed,
Bishop Staiphan Maik, the Dohlaran
Navy’s
special intendant, had attempted to get that ruling overturned, but if he’d tried, he hadn’t succeeded. Bishop Executor Wylsynn was willing to grant access to clergy for Charisians who were prepared to renounce—and
admit—
their heresy and the blasphemous rites in which they had participated in the worship of Shan-wei, but that was as far as he was prepared
to go.

Which, since we haven’t
had
any “blasphemous rites” or “worshipped” Shan-wei, would be just a bit difficult for any of them to do honestly. And all of us know from what happened to those poor bastards the Inquisition got hold of after the Ferayd Massacre how Clyntahn would use any “confessions” against Charis. Not to mention the fact that “admitting” any such thing would make whoever “confessed”
automatically subject to the Punishment of Schueler
.
And only a drooling idiot would believe someone like Clyntahn wouldn’t get around to applying it sooner or later, no matter what Lainyr might promise first
.

Despite that, some of his men—a few; no more than a couple of dozen—had “recanted” their heresy and been “received back into the bosom of Mother Church” … for now, at least. Or so their
fellows had been told, at any rate. Manthyr had his doubts about how long
that
was going to last, and the constancy of the rest of his people in the face of what they all knew awaited them eventually had been one of his few sources of consolation over the past months.

Yet even that consolation had been flawed with bitterness, and the despair was always there for everyone. It combined with all
those other factors to drive down the men’s ability—and willingness—to resist disease, and by his latest estimate, at least a third of his remaining personnel were currently ill. It had been worse over the winter months, in some ways, but malnutrition and privation hadn’t yet reduced their resistance then. Now that spring’s milder temperatures had arrived, the sick list should have been shrinking;
instead, it was climbing, and they were losing three or four men every five-day.