How Firm a Foundation (48 page)

And then she’d been gone.

*   *   *

“How many women do you know who could’ve done what she did today?” Gahrvai asked now, looking around at his father and the others.

“Shan-wei!” Anvil Rock retorted. “Ask me how many
men
I know who could’ve done what she did today!”

“Either way, men or women, the answer is damned
few,” Tartarian said. “And don’t think for a moment all those witnesses didn’t realize it, too. Oh, I’m sure a lot of it was political calculation. She had to know how it would affect all of us. But even if that’s true, she managed to
do
it, and I think it was at least as sincere as it was calculated. Probably more, to be honest.”

“I think you’re right,” Gahrvai said. “And I have to ask myself
whether or not those reports about her being ‘uninjured’ are truly accurate.”

“Her ribs, you mean?” Windshare asked. Gahrvai nodded, and the dashing young earl shrugged. “I noticed that, too. Not that surprising, I suppose, with Merlin landing on top of her that way! Must’ve bruised the hell out of her.”

“I think they were more than just bruised,” Doyal said quietly. “I think it’s entirely possible
they were broken.”

“Nonsense!” Anvil Rock objected. “I’m as impressed with her as any of you, but let’s not get too carried away. Broken ribs are no joke, I’ve had my share of them over the years, by God! If she’d had that on top of almost being killed, not even
she
would have just sat there.”

“With all due respect, My Lord,” Doyal replied, “don’t forget that this isn’t the first time she’s
almost been killed. Think about that affair at Saint Agtha’s. According to my reports, she picked up her dead Guardsmen’s rifles and killed at least a dozen of the attackers herself!” He shook his head. “Whatever else Sharleyan Ahrmahk may be, she’s no hothouse flower. In fact, I’m coming to the opinion that she’s even tougher than we thought she was.”

Gahrvai started to say something, then changed
his mind and sat back in his chair. His father didn’t seem to notice, but one of Tartarian’s eyebrows quirked slightly. He looked a question at the younger Gahrvai, but Sir Koryn only shook his head with a smile and listened while Earl Anvil Rock disposed of the notion that even Empress Sharleyan would have continued to dispense justice with broken ribs.

Tartarian let the moment pass, and Gahrvai
was just as happy he had. After all, there was time to double-check his men’s report in the morning. The would-be assassin’s first bullet
had
to have gone somewhere, and the fact that no one had been able to find it—yet!—proved nothing. He’d been certain they were going to find it embedded in the massive throne somewhere, but they hadn’t, which meant it had to have hit the rear wall, instead,
didn’t it? Of course it did!

Still, probably better to keep his mouth shut until they did manage to find it. If his father found Doyal’s notion that Sharleyan had managed to go right on with broken ribs ridiculous, he would have found the suggestion that perhaps—just perhaps—that bullet hadn’t completely missed its mark after all ludicrous.

Because it
is
ludicrous, Koryn,
Gahrvai told himself
firmly. Absolutely
ludicrous!

*   *   *

“I never want to hear another word about how stubborn
Cayleb
is,” Merlin Athrawes said severely as he helped Sharleyan across her bedchamber. The rush of pouring rain and the rumble of thunder half drowned his voice, but she heard him and looked up with a battered, bruised, but still game smile.

He was glad to see it, but he’d been less than amused when
he’d first gotten her back here.

The adrenaline, determination, and sheer willpower which had carried her from Princess Aleatha’s Ballroom to her own suite had deserted her once she crossed the threshold. She’d virtually collapsed into Merlin’s arms, and Sairaih Hahlmyn had fluttered around the
seijin
in shocked dismay as he’d scooped her up, carried her to her sleeping chamber, and deposited
her gently on the enormous bed.

Sairaih’s dismay had turned into something very like outrage as Merlin began calmly unbuttoning and unlacing the empress’ gown.

“
Seijin
Merlin! What do you think you’re
doing?
”

“Oh, hush, Sairaih!” Sharleyan had said weakly, her voice much thinner and breathless than usual. “The
seijin’
s a healer as well as a warrior, you ninny!”

“But, Your Majesty—!”

“I am
not
going to have a Corisandian healer in here examining me,” Sharleyan had said flatly, sounding much more like her usual self for a moment. “The last thing we need is some wild rumor about how I was actually shot after all, and you
know
that’s what would happen if word got out that I’d summoned healers to my bedchamber. By Langhorne’s Watch, they’d have me on my deathbed!”

“But, Your Majesty—!”

“There’s no point arguing with her, Sairaih,” Merlin had said in a resigned voice. “Trust me, if there
is
any serious damage, Edwyrd and I will have a healer in here in a heartbeat, whatever she says. But she’s probably right about the rumor potential, so if it’s only bruising.…”

“But, Your Majesty—!”

The third attempt had been little more than pro forma, and Sharleyan had actually smiled as
she shook her head.

“I won’t say I’m as stubborn as Cayleb, no matter what Merlin thinks,” she’d said. “But I am stubborn enough to win this argument, Sairaih. So why don’t you just concentrate on brewing me some tea with
lots
of sugar? Trust me, I could use it.”

“Very well, Your Majesty.” Sairaih had finally conceded defeat. She’d given Merlin one last, moderately outraged look, then marched
out past Sergeant Seahamper. The sergeant had looked at Sharleyan for a moment, shaken his head with a pronounced air of resignation, and moved his gaze to Merlin.

“Good luck getting her to see reason,” he’d said a bit sourly. Then he’d tapped the ear holding his own com earplug. “And somehow I don’t think His Majesty’s going to hold off on yelling at her very much longer, even if it is the middle
of the night in Tellesberg.”

“Maybe we can at least get Owl to give them a private channel,” Merlin had said hopefully. Seahamper had snorted, given Sharleyan one last look, then closed the door.

“It’s not like I’m a complete idiot,” the empress had said plaintively, then gasped as Merlin lifted her gently into a sitting position to peel the gown down from her shoulders. “Even if there’d been
another one of them out there, it’s not like I was running the kind of risk Maikel ran in the Cathedral.”

“There shouldn’t have been
any
of them,” Merlin had said through his teeth. “How in God’s name did they get a damned
pistol
past Gahrvai’s guards?”

“I’ve been checking the record from the SNARCs’ sensors,” Seahamper had said over the com from the other side of the bedchamber’s closed door.
“Owl’s managed to pick up the moment he was admitted. He was carrying the real Grahsmahn’s summons; Grahsmahn was on the list from the first session; and it never occurred to any of us to tell them to look for firearms concealed inside someone’s tunic because it hadn’t occurred to us that anyone could
fit
one inside his tunic. And if you want something to make you feel even better, Merlin, Owl’s
run the imagery through his facial recognition software. Underneath all that beard and the tattoo, it was none other than our elusive friend Paitryk Hainree.”

The sergeant’s tone had been almost conversational, and Merlin had known he was almost certainly right about the confluence of factors which had allowed the gunman to get past Gahrvai’s guardsmen. No one on Safehold had ever heard of a
“photo ID,” so unless Hainree had run into someone who’d remembered the real Grahsmahn from the previous session, there was precious little way anyone could have spotted the deception. Besides, if Owl was right and it had been Hainree, they’d already had ample evidence he was (or had been, at any rate) fiendishly good at getting into (and out of) places where he wasn’t supposed to be. But Seahamper’s
calm tone hadn’t fooled him. The sergeant was probably even more upset with himself than Merlin was with
himself
. This was exactly the sort of thing they were supposed to prevent.

“Don’t the two of you pick on yourselves over this!” Sharleyan had scolded as Merlin gently eased down her chemise. “In a crowd that size? One man? And a man who had the exact documentation he was supposed to have?”
She’d shaken her head. “Ideally, maybe you and the SNARCs should have spotted him. In fact, though, it’s not at all surprising to me that someone managed to get past you. For that matter, Merlin, you and Edwyrd argued against this approach from the beginning exactly because you were afraid of something like this. So why aren’t you simply saying ‘I told you so’ and letting it go at that?”

“Because
you damn near got yourself
killed
this morning!” Merlin had snapped. He’d paused, looking down into her face, his sapphire eyes dark. “I’ve lost too many of you already, Sharley. I’m not about to lose any more!”

“Of course you’re not,” she’d said softly, laying one hand on his mailed forearm. “And I didn’t mean to sound flip. But that doesn’t make anything I just said untrue, does it? Besides,”
she’d smiled impishly, “at least we’ve just demonstrated that Owl’s tailoring works!”

“More or less,” Merlin had conceded, and grimaced as he ran his fingertips lightly across the huge discolored bruise on Sharleyan’s rib cage. “On the other hand, it didn’t spread the kinetic energy as well as I could have wished. You’ve got at least two broken ribs here, Sharley. Probably three. I’m seriously
tempted to whisk you off to the cave tonight and let Owl’s auto doc take a look at you.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be nec—
Ow!
”

Sharleyan had flinched as he’d pressed just a bit harder. He’d shaken his head in apology, and she’d sucked in a deep breath.

“I don’t think that’s going to be necessary,” she’d said. “Even if they’re broken, I mean. Isn’t this one of the reasons you inoculated
us with the medical nanotech?”

“It’ll help you heal
faster
; what it
won’t
do is heal this overnight,” Merlin had retorted. “And it’s not going to help much with the pain, either. If you think this is bad now, you just wait till you wake up and try to move in the morning!”

“I know,” she’d said glumly. “This isn’t the first time I’ve broken them.”

“You and that damned pony,” Seahamper had muttered
over the com, and she’d giggled, then gasped in pain.

“Exactly,” she’d said, and looked up at Merlin. “I’m perfectly prepared to be ‘indisposed’ in the morning, at least as long as I can get to breakfast with the Regency Council without looking too much like I’ve been beaten with a stick. I figure they’ll expect at least a little morning-after reaction out of me. So if we just strap up my ribs
tightly, I can get through that much, I think. Then I
promise
I’ll come straight back here and spend the day resting while all those busy little nanites work on fixing me.”

“What do
you
think, Edwyrd?” Merlin had asked.

“Unless you’re ready to knock her on the head, that’s probably as close to a reasonable attitude as you’re likely to get out of her,” Seahamper had said sourly. “Besides,” he’d
gone on a bit grudgingly, “it might not be a very good idea to have her ‘incommunicado’ after something like this. I doubt anyone’s going to come calling in the middle of the night, but the two of you would be gone for hours, and if something
does
come up I won’t be able to fob people off the way I might get away with in Cherayth. ‘I’m sorry, the Empress is unavailable’ isn’t going to cut it after
something like this morning.”

“You’re probably right,” Merlin had sighed, then looked down at Sharleyan and shaken his head. “Too bad current Safeholdian fashion doesn’t include corsets,” he’d said with a lurking smile. “They’re probably the most fiendish device this side of the Inquisition, but just this once they’d actually come in handy! Since we don’t have them, though, let’s get you the
rest of the way out of your clothes and see what we can do about strapping up those ribs.”

*   *   *

That had been the better part of six hours ago, and Seahamper had been right about Cayleb’s reaction. The emperor had, indeed, gotten Owl to give him a private connection to Sharleyan, but her side of the conversation had been remarkably monosyllabic, consisting primarily of “Yes” or “No” interspersed
with an occasional “Of course I won’t” and even a single “Whatever you say.” It had all been most unlike her, and it probably said a great deal about how deeply she’d been shaken, however composed she might have seemed on the surface.

Now Merlin helped her the last few feet from the bathroom. She made two or three false starts on getting herself turned around and folding down to sit on the bed,
then gasped as Merlin scooped her up and effortlessly laid her down again.

“Thank you.” She smiled tightly up at him as lightning whickered beyond her window, briefly etching his profile against the panes, and thunder crashed. “As a matter of fact, this is quite a bit worse than the falling-off-the-pony episode.”

“You don’t say?” Merlin replied dryly, then sighed, looking down at the ugly bruise
on the left side of her face. His elbow had done that, he knew, and it was almost as dark as the one on her rib cage, he thought as he touched it with a gentle fingertip. They were lucky he hadn’t broken her cheekbone, as well.

“Sorry about that,” he said with a sad little smile.

“Why? For saving my life the second time?” She reached up and caught his hand, holding it for a moment. “This seems
to be getting to be quite a habit for you where Ahrmahks are concerned, doesn’t it? Look—there’s even a thunderstorm! Do you think you could get over it by the time Alahnah grows up?”

“I’ll try, Your Majesty. I’ll certainly try. And when she’s a bit older,” Merlin reached into his belt pouch, “maybe she’d like a little memento of her first trip to Corisande with you.”