by David Weber
“In the fullness of time, God will assuredly grant victory to those who strive in His most holy name. We have no doubt of that, and we know that your faith, as our own, is the unshakable rock upon which God’s Church rests. That faith will not be disappointed, nor will God permit it to be dismayed. Yet dark days lie before us, my brothers. Let none of you be misled into believing otherwise. We have been called to the sternest test mere mortals have ever faced. We stand in the place of the Archangels themselves, face-to-face with the menace of Shan-wei, and we cannot command the rakurai, as Langhorne did. We cannot reach out our hand and smite the corruption of Charis and Chisholm with the cleansing fire of God’s purifying wrath. But what we must do, we can do. We face not Shan-wei herself, as Langhorne faced her in the fullness of her own perverted divine power. We face only her servants, only those who have given their souls into her dark service, trusting her to bear them up. Yet those mistaken, lost, and accursed souls would have done well to recall that Shan-wei is the Mother of Lies and the Mistress of Betrayal. We, who trust in the fidelity and the authority of God’s chosen Archangels, have a surety and a fortress which Shan-wei can never provide. And because this is so, because we do battle in the armor of God Himself, our victory is sure, for it will be His victory, and God does not suffer Himself to be defeated.”
The Grand Vicar paused, surveying the faces of the assembled vicars, and the Grand Council Chamber was hushed and still.
“The time has not yet come to openly draw Langhorne’s sword,” he said then, “but that day draws near. And when it arrives, my brothers, when Langhorne’s sword is unsheathed in the pure service of God, it will not be returned to its scabbard while even one of His foes breathes.”
Despite her sitting room’s warm fire, Ahnzhelyk Phonda shivered inside as she reread the letter on her desk.
Unlike many of the letters which passed through her hands, this one was unencrypted, although there were code words and codenames scattered throughout it which would have made no sense to most readers. It was printed in neat block characters, rather than handwritten, but she recognized Samyl Wylsynn’s characteristic phrasing. She supposed there’d been no point in putting it into cipher when it had been accompanied by the complete text of the Grand Vicar’s annual Address from the Throne. There were only so many people it could have come from, after all.
She laid the single sheet back on her blotter and looked out the frosty windowpane at the snow-choked streets of the city.
She couldn’t see it from where she sat, but she knew about the curl of smoke emerging from the roof of the shed her gardener normally used for summer storage. As was her custom, she’d made the shed available to some of Zion’s poor for the winter. It was pitiful enough housing for Zion’s climate, but at least she’d made sure the shed’s walls were wind- and weathertight, and she’d quietly arranged to keep the coal bin alongside the shed door filled. She didn’t know how many temporary tenants she’d acquired this winter, but she did know that when the city’s snow finally cleared, at least some bodies would be found. They always were, and the greatest number were always huddled near the Temple’s vents, where the waste heat breathed out into the freezing cold.
Her lovely mouth tightened at the thought and anger stirred deep in her expressive eyes as she thought about Grand Vicar Erek’s Address and all of the condemnation showered upon the “apostate heretics” of Charis and Chisholm by the men who lived in the sumptuous comfort of the Temple. Men immune to hunger and cold, who never gave a single thought to the pitiful poor trying desperately to keep themselves and their families alive by crouching around the vents of their own magnificent dwelling place. She knew exactly what it was that had actually triggered her decision to join the reformists like Samyl Wylsynn, and it hadn’t really been any one event, any one realization.
Her own life, the studied rejection and denial of her own father and the power of office which had allowed him to do it, had left her ripe for rebellion—she knew that much, admitted it freely—but there were so many ways she might have rebelled. Of course, she might also have simply disappeared, faded away into invisibility as one more cast-off, bastard daughter seeking refuge in a nun’s vocation. Even her adoptive parents had undoubtedly wished that she’d been able to accept that fate, although her beloved older sister had always known better.
Yet the exact form that rebellion had taken had grown gradually, nurtured in the quiet stillness of her own mind and soul as she witnessed the incredible luxury of the great Church dynasties in a city supposedly dedicated solely to the service of God. In a city where starvation and exposure collected their grim tolls every winter in sight of the Temple itself. That was what had opened her eyes to the truth of the Church’s internal corruption, moved her awareness to the casual callousness of the Church as a whole, not simply of her own vile excuse for a father. However he might have abused the powers and perquisites of his own birth and office, he’d been able to do it only because the other men who ruled and perverted the Church with him had allowed him to. Because so many of them had done precisely the same sorts of things, and the consequences for so many others had been so much more terrible than the ones for her. That was what had impelled her outrage . . . and it was her love of what the Church was supposed to be which had fueled her rebellion against what it was.
And now this.
She looked at the transcript of the Address from the Throne once more, and like the man who’d written the accompanying letter, she saw only one thing. The men—and women, she thought, the ice in her eyes warming as she thought of Adorai Dynnys and Sharleyan of Chisholm—who had dared to raise their hands openly against the corruption she’d fought in secret for so long were to be crushed. She knew as well as any member of the Council of Vicars who had actually written that Address, and she recognized the official enunciation of the Group of Four’s policy.
I don’t understand why I can still feel so . . . surprised by it, she thought. It’s been obvious it had to come to this. I suppose it’s just that deep down inside, I wanted so badly to believe that it might not, after all.
Her mind turned to Adorai. She’d had only a single carefully and circuitously delivered letter from Erayk Dynnys’ widow since she’d reached Charis safely. Her description of Archbishop Maikel and King—no, Emperor—Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan had warmed Ahnzhelyk’s heart. The safety Adorai and her sons had found, the protection she’d been given, and her description of the “heretics” of Charis told Ahnzhelyk Phonda who was truly on God’s side in the titanic, looming contest whose storm clouds were spreading steadily through Safehold’s skies.
She sat thinking for a moment longer, then inhaled sharply, squared her slender shoulders, and gathered up the sheets of paper on her desk once more. She jogged them neatly together, then slid them into the hidden compartment cunningly built into the desk, and her mind was busy as she considered the unsigned letter’s instructions. She wondered what Wylsynn and the other vicars and senior clerics of his circle of reform were going to decide about the so-called “Church of Charis.” Judging from his direction to see to it that the transcript of the Grand Vicar’s Address reached Charis, they, too, had few illusions about who truly served God and who followed corruption. But had they gone far enough to realize consciously what their hearts had obviously recognized already?
She didn’t know. Just as she didn’t know whether or not this new Empire of Charis would prove strong enough to resist the tempest gathering to sweep across it. But she did know where she stood, and she nodded slowly as she reflected upon that point.
She stood, walking to the window, looking out onto the bleak winter beauty of the snow, and her brain was busy, sorting through all of the other information she’d acquired about the Council of Vicars and the Group of Four’s intentions. She’d passed all of it along to Wylsynn and his circle, but she’d kept copies of all of it, as well. She didn’t know how much of it might be useful to Charis, but she didn’t have to make that decision. Adorai could decide
after Ahnzhelyk got all of it into her hands.
Is it really that easy? Her eyes followed a pedestrian as he slogged along, head bent against the wind, huddled deep inside his cloak. That easy to go from agent of reform to schismatic spy?
She had no answer . . . but she felt confident God would understand.
. II .
White Horse Reach,
and
Royal Palace,
City of Manchyr,
League of Corisande
The schooners’ white sails sliced across the blue waters of White Horse Reach like the dorsal fins of krakens as they closed upon their prey.
They flew the new flag of the Imperial Charisian Navy, but the single light galley fleeing desperately before them flew the green and gold banner of the Church. The three schooners had reacted to the sight of that flag much as actual krakens would have responded to blood in the water, and the leading pursuer had already cleared away her forward chaser. A puff of gray-white smoke erupted from her foredeck and a thin plume of spray kicked up just ahead of the galley.
The fleeing vessel ignored the demand to stop, and the schooner fired again. This time, it was no warning shot. The fourteen-pound round shot slammed into the galley’s stern, and splinters flew. One of the schooner’s consorts began to fire, as well, and more splashes erupted around the fugitive’s fragile hull. After another fifteen minutes—and at least three more direct hits—the galley finally surrendered to the inevitable. Her sail came down, and so did the proud golden scepter of the Church of God Awaiting.
It was a scene which had become unusual in the waters off the island of Corisande only because there was so little prey left for the Charisian Navy to pursue. In the last month, no Corisandian-flagged ship had been safe. Navy cruisers like the schooners—and a few privateers—with brooms lashed to their mastheads had swept the seas clear of Hektor of Corisande’s ships. The few merchant ships still flying the Corisandian flag huddled defensively in harbors—preferably neutral ones, when they could find them, where the Charisian Navy might not send in cutting-out expeditions after them—while the ships of the Corisandian Navy waited to defend their anchorages against the inevitable onslaught.
Even as the schooners came alongside their prize, someone standing on their decks could have seen half a dozen plumes of smoke rising from the Corisandian shore where naval landing parties, covered by Marines, were busily burning naval stores, sawmills, warehouses, highway bridges, and anything remotely of military value all along the coast of the Duchy of Manchyr. In a few places, the landing parties had found themselves facing garrisons or batteries. When that happened, they simply withdrew, confident they would soon find easier prey, or else they circled around any unsupported batteries to take them from their unprotected landward side. With the Corisandian Navy blockaded in port, even light units could operate with impunity, and no army detachment could march fast enough and far enough to keep pace with a warship, or to intercept a landing party before it reembarked once more. There was no way Prince Hektor’s troops could prevent, or even seriously inconvenience, the Charisian onslaught, and his coast bled from a hundred tiny wounds every day.
“—put a stop to this . . . this piracy!”
The speaker glared at Admiral Tartarian, and the earl reminded himself not to glare back. Not that he had any constitutional objection to letting some of the air out of this pompous windbag. Exactly what he and the other property owners being . . . inconvenienced by their Charisian visitors thought Tartarian could do about their problems eluded him. On the other hand, as the commander of the Corisandian Navy, he supposed it was inevitable that he would be the recipient of their ire.
What I ought to do is tell them to take it up with Cayleb, he thought bitingly. Unfortunately, that’s not a very practical response.
“I realize the situation is bad,” he said instead, addressing the entire delegation crowded into his office. “Unhappily, all I can tell you at this time is that it’s likely to get still worse before it gets any better.”
“But—!” the complainer began, waving both hands in the air.
“I’m sure all of you are well aware of the danger the entire League faces,” Tartarian continued, overriding the other man ruthlessly. “At this time, all of our available warships are tied down defending major ports. I’m afraid it’s simply impossible to free any of them up to protect our shipping.” Assuming even for an instant that they could somehow fight their way out of harbor against the Charisian Navy, he added to himself. “As I’ve already told you, Earl Anvil Rock has agreed to assign every available man to coast defense. What can be done is being done, and I assure you all that we will continue to search for additional measures we can implement. But in all honesty, our resources are so heavily committed to resisting the invasion that I very much doubt we’ll be able to make much difference against these shipping and coastal raids. I’m sorry, but that’s simply the way it is, and I’m not going to sit here and lie to you by making promises I can’t keep.”
The loudmouth with the waving hands had opened his mouth again while Tartarian was talking. Now he closed it with a snap and looked around him at his fellow “delegates.” Most of them looked as angry and unhappy as he did, but several of them were also shaking their heads at him, and Tartarian felt a trickle of relief. What he’d just told them obviously wasn’t what they wanted to hear, but there was no way any reasonable man could have disputed a single thing he’d said.
Fortunately, there were enough reasonable men in the delegation to get them back out of Tartarian’s office without his actually having to order the loudmouth taken out and shot.
Not, the earl reflected, standing as his “visitors” filed back out the door, that it wouldn’t have been much more satisfying to just go ahead and have him shot. Surely the Prince wouldn’t begrudge me one little execution after all of the crap I’ve diverted from the Palace!
The thought restored some needed balance to his day, and he snorted in harsh amusement. Maybe he owed that big-mouthed idiot some thanks after all. It wasn’t likely that he was going to find anything else to amuse him today.
He glanced at the clock ticking away on his wall and grimaced. If he left now, he’d just be in time for this afternoon’s meeting of Prince Hektor’s senior advisers.
Which, he thought, is probably going to be even less amusing than this meeting was.
“My Prince, I don’t want to sound like I sympathize overmuch with the pain-in-the-arse bleaters who have been besieging Taryl’s office, but they do have a point,” Sir Lyndahr Raimynd said almost apologetically.
Prince Hektor gave him a moderately ugly glance, but the treasurer didn’t flinch. First, because what he’d said was true, and second, because he knew Hektor’s ire wasn’t actually directed at him.
“I’m not saying I plan on shedding any tears over their personal losses, My Prince,” he said. “I’m only trying to point out two things. First, we’re suffering not simply property and financial losses, but also the loss of capabilities we may need badly later. And, second, the perception that the Charisians can operate with impunity along the coast of the capital duchy itself is beginning to have a serious impact on your subjects’ morale. I can see definite signs of that among the members of the merchant and manufactory associations, and I’m sure it’s affecting all of our people to at least some extent.”
“I can’t disagree with anything Lyndahr’s just said, My Prince,” Tartarian said, before Hektor could speak. “The problem is that I don’t see anything we can do about it. Cayleb’s scouts have located every warship we have. He has his damned schooners patrolling off of every port where they’ve found one of my galleons, and every one of those schooners has a squadron or so of Charisian galleons waiting, just out of sight from shore, to be summoned if any of my captains tries to put to sea.”
“Could we possibly transfer some additional strength from the Dark Hills?” Raimynd asked anxiously, looking back and forth between Hektor and Earl Anvil Rock.
“No,” he said firmly, almost harshly. Then he shook his head, like a horse irritated by a fly, and smiled a little crookedly at Raimynd. “I’m not trying to bite your head off, Lyndahr. To be honest, I’d like to bite someone’s head off, if only to relieve my frustration. But I don’t intend to start with the man who manages my finances and who’s only trying to tell me the truth.”
Raimynd returned his prince’s smile and bobbed his head in acknowledgment of the semi-apology, and Hektor continued.
