in harm’s way. I could wish I had at least one daughter who wasn’t.”
“I can understand that.” Sharleyan touched his knee again. “But it’s sons like yours who stand between everyone’s daughters and men like Zhaspahr Clyntahn, General. Be proud of them, and tell them, the next time you have the chance, how grateful Cayleb and I are for all four of you.”
“I will, Your Majesty,” Chermyn said a bit gruffly, then cleared his throat.
“I see we’re almost at shipside, Your Majesty,” he said in a deliberately brisker voice, and she nodded.
“So we are. Well, I suppose it’s time for all of the ridiculous departure ceremony.”
“I’d as soon miss it myself, truth be told,” Chermyn admitted. “And I don’t envy you and His Majesty for having to put up with so much of it. To be honest,” he looked at her with an undeniably hopeful expression, “I’d like to think it might be possible for someone else to take over as viceroy general and let me get away from all the fuss and folderol and back to being an honest Marine. Or even transfer to the Army.”
“I don’t know, General,” Sharleyan said, furrowing her brow pensively while she tried not to chuckle out loud at the opening he’d given her. “You’ve done so well here. And while I know the situation’s improved, it’s still going to be… delicate for quite some time to come.”
“I know, Your Majesty,” Chermyn sighed. He obviously hadn’t expected to convince her.
“Still,” Sharleyan said, drawing out the word as the carriage came to a halt and Merlin Athrawes and Edwyrd Seahamper swung down from their horses beside it. “I suppose I can think of one other duty Cayleb and I really need a good, experienced military officer and proven administrator to deal with. I’m afraid it’s not a combat assignment, although for all I know there may be some fighting entailed, but it would get you out of Corisande,” she ended hopefully, raising her eyebrows at him.
“I’d be honored to serve you and His Majesty in any way I could, Your Majesty,” Chermyn said, although he couldn’t quite hide his disappointment at the words “it’s not a combat assignment.”
“Well, I suppose in that case we could send Baron Green Valley down here to replace you, at least temporarily,” Sharleyan said.
“Are you certain about that, Your Majesty?” Chermyn sounded a little startled. “I understood the Baron was going to be fully occupied in Zebediah for quite some time.”
“Oh, he’s been doing a very good job there,” Sharleyan agreed with a nod. “And Duke Eastshare wants him back in Maikelberg, of course, so we may not be able to send him as your replacement, after all. Still, I’m sure we’ll be able to find someone. In fact, now that I’ve thought about it for a moment, I think your Colonel Zhanstyn could probably hold the fort for you, possibly even on a semi-permanent or a permanent basis. But as far as Baron Green Valley is concerned, he was never going to be our permanent viceroy in Zebediah.”
“He wasn’t?” Chermyn looked at her in surprise as Seahamper moved to open the carriage door and let down the steps while Merlin stood facing outward, eyes scanning the crowd. She cocked her head at the Marine, and he half raised one hand. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I must have misunderstood.”
“The Baron’s a very good man, General, but he was only there to keep a lid on the island until we could decide who to name to succeed Symmyns as grand duke. That was hardly an easy decision, of course. We needed a man of proven ability and loyalty. Someone we knew we could absolutely rely upon, and to be honest, someone who deserved the recognition and the rewards which were going to come along with all the undeniable pains of straightening out the mess Symmyns left behind. Trust me, the position’s not going to be a sinecure for a long time to come, General!”
Chermyn nodded in understanding, and she shrugged.
“And once we did make up our mind who to choose, naturally we’d have to notify the new grand duke before we could even think about recalling Baron Green Valley… which I’ve just done, now that I think about it, Grand Duke Zebediah.”
Her timing was perfect, she thought delightedly. The door opened right on cue as Chermyn suddenly stopped nodding and stared at her in stupefied shock. He opened his mouth, but no words came out, and Sharleyan nodded at Sairaih, who looked as if her grin were about to split her face in two as she gathered up Princess Alahnah’s bassinet and diaper bag.
“Well, I see we’re here, Your Grace, if I may be a little premature,” Empress Sharleyan Ahrmahk said, bestowing a brilliant smile on the thunderstruck Marine, and then she held out her hand to Seahamper and descended the carriage steps into a hurricane of cheers, trumpets, and the thud of saluting guns.
JULY, YEAR OF GOD 895
Hospice of the Holy Bedard and The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands
“Langhorne bless you, Your Grace. Langhorne bless you!”
“Thank you, Father,” Rhobair Duchairn said. “I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s not as if I’ve been working as hard at this as you have. Or”-the vicar’s smile carried an odd edge of bitterness-“for as long, either.”
He laid a hand on Father Zytan Kwill’s frail shoulder. The Bedardist upper-priest was far into his eighties and growing increasingly fragile with age, yet he burned with an inner intensity Duchairn could only envy.
“That may be true, Your Grace,” Kwill replied, “but this winter…” He shook his head. “Do you realize we’ve had only thirty dead reported in the Hospice this winter from all causes? Only thirty! ”
“I know.” Duchairn nodded, although he also knew considerably more than thirty of Zion’s inhabitants had perished over the previous winter. Yet Kwill had a point. The Order of Bedard and the Order of Pasquale were responsible for caring for Zion’s poor and indigent. Well, technically all Mother Church’s orders had that duty, but the Bedardists and the Pasqualates had shouldered the primary responsibility centuries earlier. They jointly administered the soup kitchens and the shelters, and the Pasqualates provided the healers who were supposed to see that the most vulnerable of God’s children had the medical care to survive Zion’s icy cold.
The problem, of course, was that they hadn’t been doing that.
Duchairn looked out the window of Kwill’s spartan office. The Hospice of the Holy Bedard was in one of Zion’s older buildings, and the office had a spectacular view over the broad blue waters of Lake Pei, but it was as bare and sparsely furnished as an ascetic’s cell in one of the meditative monasteries. No doubt that reflected Father Zytan’s personality, but it was also because the priest had poured every mark he could lay hands on into his hopeless task for the last forty-seven years. With so many desperate needs, the thought of spending anything on himself would never even have crossed his mind.
And in all that time, Mother Church has never supported him the way she should have, the Treasurer thought grimly. Not once. Not a single time have we funded him and the others the way we ought to have .
The vicar crossed to the window, clasping his hands behind him, looking out at the leaves and blossoms which clothed the hills striding down from Zion to the huge lake. A cool breeze blew in through the opening, touching his face with gentle fingers, and the sails of small craft, barges, and larger merchant ships dotted the sparkling water under the sun’s warm rays. He could see fishing boats farther out, and perfectly formed mountains of cloud sailed across the heavens. On a day like this, it was easy even for Duchairn, who’d spent the last thirty years of his life in Zion, to forget how savage north central Haven’s winters truly were. To forget how the lake turned into a blue and gray sheet of ice, thick enough to support galleon-sized ice boats. To forget how snow drifted higher than a tall man’s head in the city’s streets. How some of those drifts, on the city’s outskirts, climbed as much as two or even three stories up the sides of buildings.
And it’s even easier for those of us who spend our winters in the Temple to forget that sort of unpleasantness, he acknowledged. We don’t have to deal with it, do we? We have our own little enclave, blessed by God, and we don’t venture out of it… except, perhaps, on the milder days when the wind doesn’t howl and fresh blizzards don’t go screaming around our sanctified ears.
He wanted to believe that was the reason for his own decades of inactivity. Wanted to think he’d been so busy, so focused on his manifold responsibilities that he’d simply gotten distracted. That he’d honestly forgotten to actually look out his window and see what was happening to those outside the Temple’s mystically heated and cooled environment because he’d been so preoccupied with his personal duties and obligations. Oh, how he wanted to think that!
You were “preoccupied,” all right, Rhobair, he told himself, filling his lungs with the cool air, inhaling the scent of the blossoms in the planter under Father Zytan’s window. You were preoccupied with fine wines, gourmet
