slightly.
“I appreciate your concern,” he said quietly and sincerely. “And your advice. I assure you, My Lord, that I’ll think long and hard before I allow anything to affect my duty to Mother Church. And I’ll bear your advice-and the Holy Bedard’s-in mind at all times.”
“Good, my son.” Bishop Staiphan touched him on the shoulder. “Good.”
Much later, after Maik had departed for shore once more, Lywys Gardynyr crossed to his desk. He picked up his well-thumbed copy of the Holy Writ from his blotter, opened it, and leafed to the first three verses of the sixth chapter of The Book of Bedard. He didn’t really need to read the words; like any dutiful son of Mother Church, he knew his Scripture well. Yet he read them anyway, eyes moving across the beautifully printed and illustrated page.
Behold and heed, you who are mothers and you who are fathers. Let not your actions or inactions bring calamity and evil upon your children. Be instead a roof over their heads, be walls about their safety.
The time will come when they will become parents to you in your old age, but that time is not yet. Now is the time to teach, and to nurture-to love and to guard.
When peril approaches, go forth to meet it far from them, lest it threaten them, as well. When duty calls you into danger, put them first in a place of safety. And when the threat of the ungodly draws nigh, set them beyond evil’s reach before you ride out to battle, and do not let the hand of the wicked fall upon them.
Oh, yes, My Lord, he thought, gazing down at those words, I’ll bear your advice in mind. . III.
Imperial Palace, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis, and HMS Dawn Star, 58, Off Round Head, White Horse Reach, Princedom of Corisande
“I hate this.”
Sharleyan Ahrmahk sat on HMS Dawn Star ’s sternwalk, Crown Princess Alahnah sleeping on her shoulder, and gazed out across the galleon’s bubbling wake at blue water sparkling under a brilliant afternoon sun. Her canvas sling-chair moved gently under her with the ship’s motion, rocking her and the baby; a pleasant following breeze stirred errant strands of the long, black hair braided loosely down her back; and the green, smooth hills of Round Head rose out of White Horse Reach to her left. She was less than a hundred and fifty miles from the end of her wearisome voyage to Manchyr, and she could comfortably expect to reach it before tomorrow’s dawn.
None of which had anything to do with the wounded, sorrowful fury in her grim brown eyes.
“We all do,” Merlin said. He stood with his hands braced on the sternwalk rail, leaning over it as he, too, looked out across the calm emptiness of the reach. “And I think we hate it most of all because we’ve seen it coming for so long.”
“And because there’s so damned little we can do about it,” Cayleb agreed harshly from far distant Tellesberg.
It was much earlier in the morning there, and the skies were cloudier, with a promise of heavy rain as he sat looking out a palace window across the table set with a breakfast of which he’d eaten remarkably little. He was scheduled to meet with Earl Gray Harbor and Baron Ironhill, Keeper of the Purse for Old Charis and Chancellor of the Exchequer for the Charisian Empire. He wasn’t looking forward to that meeting, and it had nothing to do with what he expected either of them to tell him. Trying to concentrate on their reports was going to be harder than usual, but he’d have to pretend there was nothing distracting him. He certainly couldn’t tell them what was distracting him, at any rate, and that made it immeasurably worse, since both of them were Sir Gwylym Manthyr’s friends, too.
“I’m afraid you’re both right,” Maikel Staynair said from his office. “I wish to God there were something we could do, but there isn’t.”
“There has to be something,” Domynyk Staynair protested. He’d known Manthyr longer-and better-than any of the others, and anguish tightened his voice. “We can’t just let that butcher Clyntahn…”
He trailed off, and the others’ faces stiffened. They knew exactly what was going to happen to any Charisian-especially any Charisian who’d been taken in the act of armed resistance to the Group of Four-who was dragged to Zion.
And as Cayleb had said, there was nothing they could do about it.
“I could take the skimmer,” Merlin said after a moment.
“And do what? ” Cayleb demanded even more harshly. Domynyk Staynair might have known Manthyr longer, but Sir Gwylym had been Cayleb’s flag captain at Rock Point, Crag Reach, and Darcos Sound, the man who’d sunk his own ship in his desperate effort to reach Cayleb’s father in time.
“What are you going to do?” the emperor continued in that same unyielding voice. “Not even Seijin Merlin’s going to be able to rescue a couple of hundred sick, wounded, half-starved men in the middle of an entire continent! It’s a coin-toss whether they’re going to send them by road or by ship, and you know it, but say they choose the overland route. Even if you managed to singlehandedly slaughter every single guard, how do you get them out of East Haven before the rest of the damned Temple Guard and the Dohlaran Army catch up with you? Not to mention the little fact that you’d leave scores of witnesses to something which would be flat out impossible even for a seijin!
“And even if they decide to send them by sea, how are you going to help them? Blow the transports out of the water? That would at least keep them out of the Inquisition’s hands, give them a clean death-and don’t think I don’t realize what a blessing that could be, Merlin! But if Father Paityr’s right and there really are ‘Archangels’ sleeping under the Temple, don’t you think the possibility of using advanced weapons that close to the Temple is likely to wake them up?”
“That’s a valid point, but we can’t just let ourselves be paralyzed worrying about it from here on out, either,” Merlin replied.
“Merlin, I understand how badly you want to help our people,” Archbishop Maikel said. “But Cayleb’s right about the risk, too, and you know it.”
“Of course I do!” Merlin’s tone came far closer to snapping at Staynair than anyone was accustomed to hearing from him. “But Domynyk’s got a point, too. Like Cayleb says, better to at least send them to the bottom of the ocean cleanly than let Clyntahn torture them to death for some kind of spectacle!”
“Merlin.” Sharleyan’s voice was soft, and she reached out to rest one hand on his mailed forearm. “None of us wants to see that happen. And any one of us would do anything we could to prevent it. But Cayleb’s right that we’d never be able to get them off the mainland if they choose the overland route to Zion. And if they send them over- water, instead, what do you think would happen if all their transports sank in clear, calm weather? Do you really think anyone would accept that as some kind of freak coincidence?” She shook her head as he turned to look down at her. “Everybody would know it wasn’t that. So what would Clyntahn and the others do if it happened?”
“They’d proclaim Shan-wei had claimed her own,” Domynyk Staynair put in harshly. “Which is exactly what they’re going to claim after they torture them all to death, anyway!”
“But this time they’d have a clearly ‘miraculous’ disaster to back up their claim,” his older brother pointed out. “It wouldn’t make a lot of difference to any of our people, but it would be fodder for the Group of Four’s propaganda mill.”
“Frankly, that wouldn’t stop me for a moment,” Cayleb said. He picked up his chocolate mug and drained it, then set it down beside his still well-laden plate with considerably more force than usual. “My problem is that I can’t get those ‘sleeping Archangels’ out of my brain. Merlin would have to use the skimmer’s weapons, Domynyk. It’d be the only way he could put them down. And if I’d been the paranoid setting up something like Father Paityr’s suggested is under the Temple, I’d damn well have everything within hundreds of miles of my bedroom covered with sensors that could hardly miss energy fire.”
“I’m afraid he’s right, Domynyk,” Merlin sighed. “It may be plain blind dumb luck I haven’t already triggered some kind of detection wandering around Haven and Howard the way I have. I’m inclined to think it’s more likely because nothing I’ve done so far’s crossed any threat thresholds they may’ve established. The skimmer’s electronic and thermal signatures are actually a lot weaker than the ones from the regular air cars the ‘Archangels’ were flying around in at the time of the ‘Creation.’ It was designed to be extremely stealthy against first-line tactical sensors, and they weren’t. I suspect that if anyone did set up some sort of sensor perimeter, the skimmer’s signatures don’t reach whatever level they established as representing a threat. But energy weapons?” He shook his head. “If they’ve got a sensor net up at all, they couldn’t miss that.”
