Through Fiery Trials

by David Weber

  He felt that task, that journey, stretching out before them. Knew he was as eager to begin it as he was frightened he might prove inadequate to it. But she was strong, so strong, the woman he loved. She’d never faltered before any task. She would neither fail at this one nor let him fail. He knew that with every fiber of his being. Yet now it was time for him to introduce her children to her, and he realized in some ways he’d been less frightened facing Cayleb Ahrmahk’s Marines in the mountains of Corisande than he was now.

  He looked at Nimue, and she nodded. She plucked the scalpel from his fingers and pushed his hand gently.

  “Go on,” she said. “Daddies always spoil their daughters. You might as well start now. Because I’m going to start spoiling Daffyd Rysel in about five minutes.”

  “Deal,” he said softly, and slid his gloved hands down into the thick, warm fluid, cradling that tiny, infinitely precious body.

  He lifted her gently, gently, out of the only world she’d ever known, and she stirred like a sleepy kitten inside the glistening envelope of the sac. He turned to Nimue, and she slit the membrane with infinite care.

  It was warm in the delivery room, but it was still cooler than Lyzbyt Sahmantha had been in her watery world, and she squirmed unhappily, her tiny face screwed up in a ferocious frown. Nimue dried her quickly, then wrapped her in the sterile, self-heating blanket. Its smart fabric would maintain a perfect body warmth for the baby, and Nimue lifted her, holding her against her shoulder, one hand massaging her back.

  Lyzbyt Sahmantha had been born without undergoing the labor contractions which would have helped clear her lungs in a normal delivery, but Owl had monitored the hormonal balance of the placenta, encouraging the reabsorption of the amniotic fluid from them in order to clear them for this moment. Indeed, that was what the timer had been counting down to. Those lungs had practiced breathing movements for months, preparing them for this moment, but they’d never truly breathed before this moment, and nothing happened now for several seconds, despite the stimulating movement. But then Nimue’s eyes rose to Koryn’s, glistening with tears, as they both heard that first, shallow, priceless breath. As those tiny lungs inhaled their very first sip of oxygen.

  Her breathing was unsteady, at first. It was obviously difficult for her, but her breaths gathered strength, steadied down into a regular rhythm, and Nimue pressed her cheek against that tiny blanketed form as she looked up into Koryn’s eyes. They waited another three minutes, until the umbilical stopped pulsing, then unwrapped the little girl far enough to clamp and cut the cord. Then Nimue gathered her back up, rewrapping her warmly and tenderly, before she turned to Koryn.

  “Meet our daughter,” she whispered, and tears trickled down his scarred face as he took back the fragile weight and held her to his chest. Nimue put an arm around him—or as close to around him as she could reach—and pressed her cheek into his shoulder as they both smiled down at those tightly shut eyes, that rosebud mouth.

  They stood that way for several seconds, and then Nimue stirred.

  “Let me put her in the bassinet,” she said. “Ladies may come first, but you should never keep a gentleman waiting, either.”

  * * *

  “At the risk of sounding just a tad unoriginal,” Cayleb Ahrmahk said over the com a few hours later, “God, they’re beautiful!”

  “For squinchy-eyed, miniature lobsters, of course!” Nahrmahn put in, and laughed as Koryn made a rude hand gesture in the direction of his personal computer. “They’re all squinchy-eyed, miniature lobsters at this stage, Koryn! Even my own beautiful daughters were. And, trust me,” his voice gentled, “they are beautiful.”

  “I don’t believe you ever mentioned that particular metaphor to Mahrya or Felayz, dear,” Ohlyvya Baytz said from the dowager princess’ suite in Manchyr Palace. “Probably just an oversight, I’m sure, given how delighted they would have been to hear it.”

  “The truth is the truth,” her deceased husband replied. “Besides, by now Mahrya’s figured it out for herself. And, she’s also figured out it doesn’t keep them from being beautiful.”

  “You’re right, they are.” Nimue smiled down into the double bassinet between her and Koryn’s chairs. “I can’t thank you all enough. Especially you for thinking of it—and hitting me over the head with a big enough clue stick—Nynian. And you, Elayn.”

  “You’re entirely welcome,” Elayn Clareyk told her with a smile.

  Nynian had been right; every woman of childbearing age in the inner circle had volunteered as their egg donor. But Nimue and Koryn had accepted Elayn’s offer in the end. Her golden hair and green eyes weren’t a perfect match for Nimue’s red hair and sapphire eyes, but they offered more “northern genes” than Sharleyan’s or Irys’ would have. Well, Irys’ chestnut hair probably would have come close enough, but the Daikyn chin had a tendency to breed true and they’d decided against risking any “family resemblances,” despite the fact that she and Koryn were cousins.

  They’d also taken shameless advantage of the fact that Nimue was a seijin. She’d insisted that she had to return to the seijins’ hidden, mystic home as the time of her children’s birth drew near. No one had wanted to argue with a seijin, and no one had quite dared to ask any questions—openly, at least—when General Gahrvai and his wife quietly disappeared a month or so before her time. No one saw them board ship to leave Corisande, but, then again, it was well known that no one had seen Seijin Nimue arrive aboard ship in Corisande, either.

  As Merlin had observed at the time, “Sometimes it’s good to be the seijin.”

  That had neatly disposed of the need for any obstetricians, midwives, official birth records, or any of the other impedimenta which might have been awkward, under the circumstances. And it would also allow Nimue and Koryn a few blissful five-days of privacy to settle down with their offspring before they returned to Manchyr as mysteriously as they’d departed.

  “Are you two still planning on another two full five-days before you head home?” Merlin asked now. Nimue raised an eyebrow, and his holograph shrugged.

  “No reason you shouldn’t!” he assured her. “I’m just remembering how … hands-on Koryn is where the Guard’s concerned. And you, too, now that I think about it. For that matter, Tymahn would probably appreciate a bit of a heads-up before you turn up on the palace doorstep. I’m planning on slipping a ‘seijin’s mysterious note’ under his door to give him a couple of days’ notice. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Koryn agreed with a chuckle. Major Tymahn Maiyrs was his second in command in the Corisandian Royal Guard. Now he looked across at Nimue and raised an eyebrow. She looked back for a moment, then sighed.

  “You’re right about that hands-on stuff, Merlin,” she said a bit glumly. “And I know it’s going to suck us both in, unless I decide to give up seijin-ing in favor of motherhood, and I don’t think we can afford that. I don’t know how you and Cayleb have managed it, Sharley. I mean, I know physically how you’ve done it; I just can’t figure out how you manage to carve out family time from everything else! If I’m going to be honest, that’s probably what worries me the most.”

  “You’ll manage, too.” Sharleyan smiled encouragingly. “It’s not easy, and sometimes you just have to put your foot down and tell all those people who want you to figure things out for them that they’ll have to deal for the afternoon while you spend some quality time getting a baby fix.” She chuckled. “It’s surprising how understanding your staff can be if you just drop a few casual hints about headsmen.”

  “I don’t own any headsmen,” Nimue pointed out.

  “No, and you don’t need them. You have your own katana, last time I looked. And then there’s that whole seijin business. Do you really think anyone’s going to argue with you?”

  “Probably not,” Nimue conceded.

  “Well, there you are.” Sharleyan elevated her nose with an audible sniff. “There are some people the world knows better than to piss off. Any mother fal
ls into that category. Throw in a crown—or a katana—and people get out of the way in a hurry.”

  “And at least your nanny will understand what’s going on,” Merlin pointed out.

  “And get to lord it over the entire palace staff,” another voice said. “God, I am so looking forward to that! A miller’s daughter from Tarikah getting to run an entire aristocratic establishment!”

  “Easy there, slash lizard!” Kynt Clareyk laughed. “You don’t want to make too many waves.”

  “I’m not going to make any waves at all,” Hairyet Trumyn said firmly. “I won’t have to … as long as they’re reasonable and do things my way.”

  Nimue laughed, but there was more than a kernel of truth in that.

  Hairyet Trumyn had grown up in the same Siddarmarkian town as Elayn Ahdyms, although they hadn’t actually known one another … before the Sword of Schueler. They’d met only after the Sword had killed every other member of their immediate families, when they’d each found herself alone, aside from Elayn’s younger sister. Loss and grief, terror and despair, hunger and cold, and the desperate need for someone they could trust in the midst of such overwhelming darkness had brought them together—driven them together—as they fought to somehow survive. The expedients to which they’d been driven had left dark spots in their souls, but through it all, they’d comforted one another, wept with one another, guarded one another, protected one another, and they’d clung to the bond that had forged between them.

  After the Jihad, when Elayn had met and married Kynt Clareyk—and, just incidentally, become a duchess in the process—Hairyet had found her own suite in their home. Along with Elayn, she’d begun to heal emotionally and spiritually … only to discover she’d developed ovarian cancer. Siddarmarkian surgeons were remarkably sophisticated for a pre-electricity culture, but the cancer had already metastasized far beyond anything they might have treated.

  She’d known she was dying, and she’d done her best to make peace with that, but it had been hard after surviving so much. And in some ways, it had been even harder for Elayn. But unknown to her, the Brethern of Saint Zhernau had already been considering her own nomination to the inner circle. Hairyet’s prognosis had been handed down barely a five-day before Elayn’s nomination was confirmed, and the circle had readily agreed to consider Hairyet for membership, as well, on an accelerated basis. In a worst-case situation, she could always be placed in cryo sleep until the confrontation with the Church was resolved, one way or another. They’d already been forced to do that more than once, and Owl’s expanded medical facilities had ample room for her, as well. But that hadn’t been necessary. Her personality had survived not only the Sword, the Jihad, and being miraculously cured of cancer, but also learning the truth about the Archangels and the Church of God Awaiting, unbowed.

  As Manchyr Palace was about to discover.

  When Nimue and Koryn returned to Manchyr, they would be accompanied by Seijin Krystin Nylsyn. The tales of the seijins during the War Against the Fallen abounded with seijins who’d been teachers or scholars, as well as warriors. Some of them had been healers, and that was what Hairyet—Krystin—had become. Despite her brash personality, the laughter she used as her window to the world, she’d seen too much, lost too much. She had to give back, and her own miraculous survival courtesy of Federation medical science had told her how she had to do it. So, yes, she would be the autocratic empress of the Gahrvai family’s nursery, and as such would cover for any little … irregularities about Nimue’s version of motherhood. But she would also come to Manchyr with complete neural wetware and a direct connection to Owl and his medical database.

  At the moment, she was in Chisholm with Duke and Duchess Serabor, although her naturally blond hair would become permanently black, her complexion would turn several shades darker, and she would acquire a small, rather attractive mole high on one cheekbone—all courtesy of Owl’s nanites—to go with her new name when she stepped into her own seijin persona. The combination of dark skin, hair as dark as Sharleyan’s or Nynian’s, and “Krystin’s” naturally ice-blue eyes would be sufficiently esoteric in Corisande to underline her seijin status. And, hopefully, the relatively few people who’d met her in Chisholm would fail to recognize her if they happened to meet Seijin Krystin at some later point, as well.

  “If you can stand it, Krystin,” Nimue said now, “Koryn and I would really appreciate it if you could get Merlin to run you out to the Cave in his recon skimmer sometime next five-day. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to start … I don’t know, shaking down in our new relationship. And Owl and I are still tinkering on how a PICA’s system can process nutrients well enough to lactate convincingly. We could probably use your insight on that, too.” She smiled. “Owl’s wonderful, but there are certain elements of this whole physiology thing that he understands a lot better intellectually than he does experientially.”

  “In my defense, I’m not equipped to experience them,” Owl pointed out against a background mutter of laughter. “And I might also suggest that if you were not possessed of a super-abundant quantity of that quality which in myself I should describe as maintenance of aim, you wouldn’t insist on breast-feeding.”

  Cayleb laughed as he recognized the line from his own long-ago midshipman’s efficiency report, and Nimue made the same rude gesture at Owl’s video head.

  “If you can’t see it any other way, think of it as additional cover for the fact that I don’t have an organic body,” she said. “And I don’t see why everyone thinks I’m being stubborn about it!”

  “Of course not,” Merlin said soothingly. “Why, you’re hardly stubborn at all compared to a couple of other women I know. Who,” he added hastily, as Nynian glowered at him, “shall remain nameless!”

  “Good,” Nynian told him, then looked at Nimue. “You be just as stubborn as you want, Nimue! Trust me, if you give these people an inch, they’ll take a mile.”

  “Darn right,” Sharleyan said firmly.

  “As I said, ‘nameless,’” Merlin put in with a smile.

  “I’ll be delighted to come on out,” Krystin said. “And Merlin doesn’t have to drive. Owl and I are perfectly capable of getting me from Chisholm to the Cave on our own. Next Thursday be good?”

  “Perfect,” Nimue said gratefully. “I really do want a little longer to just enjoy the babies—and Koryn, of course,” she added, eyes twinkling as she glanced across at him. “But we do have to be getting back. There’s a lot going on, and the one thing we can all count on is that something we’ve never seen coming is about to bite us on the arse. Koryn and I probably need to be home to help deal with whatever it is when it happens.”

  .II.

  Protector’s Palace, Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark, and Tellesberg Palace, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis, Empire of Charis.

  “We’re going to be late,” Daryus Parkair said, closing his watch with a snap.

  “No, we’re going to be exactly on time,” Henrai Maidyn corrected rather more tranquilly. “They can’t start until we get there. So, by definition, everyone else is early.”

  “There speaks a bachelor,” Parkair said sourly. “Zhanaiah’s going to be a lot less amused when I come stumbling in a half hour late. She’s also going to insist on sniffing my breath, given the low company I normally keep!”

  Archbishop Dahnyld Fardhym laughed.

  “I promise I’ll stand as your witness that you didn’t touch a drop before the after-dinner toasts,” he offered.

  “Fat lot of good that’ll do,” Parkair grumbled. “She thinks you’re one of the worst offenders, Your Eminence!”

  “Possibly because he is?” Zhasyn Brygs suggested with an innocent expression, and Fardhym laughed again, harder.

  “Only because Greyghor keeps such good whiskey in his liquor cabinet, my son,” he said, and it was Brygs’ turn to laugh.

  They all needed something to laugh about, but his need might well be the greatest of all, because he was the newly appointe
d Governor of the Central Bank of Siddarmark, an institution few had been eager to see and many longed to throttle as promptly as possible. A longtime assistant to Henrai Maidyn at the Exchequer, Brygs had been an excellent choice for a job no one in his right mind would have wanted. Although he was two years older than Maidyn, he looked at least five years younger … for the moment. Everyone in Greyghor Stohnar’s office suspected that was going to change.

  “I can’t argue about the quality of his whiskey,” Parkair said after a moment, “but we really are going to be late if he doesn’t get a move on. And Zhanaiah isn’t the only one who’s going to be pissed if we keep everyone sitting around.”

  “That’s true,” Maidyn conceded.

  He pulled out his own watch, glanced at it, then grimaced. He crossed to Stohnar’s enormous desk and reached up to the embroidered bell pull above it. He tugged, and a moment later the office door opened in response to admit a tall, fair-haired man who walked with a pronounced limp.

  “Yes, My Lord?” the newcomer said.

  “As the Seneschal has just pointed out—I, of course, would never have mentioned it—” Maidyn said, ignoring a snort from Parkair’s direction “—we’re going to be late if we don’t get a move on, Brawdys. Would you happen to have any idea what’s holding up our esteemed Lord Protector?”

  “Nothing, as far as I know, My Lord,” Brawdys Samsyn, Greyghor Stohnar’s personal secretary said. Although he’d been with Stohnar less than five years, Samsyn didn’t seem particularly awed by his august audience. His limp was a memento of the Jihad, when Brigadier Samsyn had been severely wounded in the final fighting in Tarikah Province. A man who’d faced dug-in riflemen of the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels was unlikely to be fazed by a mere Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  “Then where is he?” Maidyn asked. “It’s not like him to run this late without a good reason.”

  “I’m not sure,” Samsyn replied, frowning slightly, because Maidyn was right about that. “He and I finished all the day’s paperwork over two hours ago, and Ahdym finished fussing over his appearance no more than forty-five minutes after that. It’s his wife’s birthday, so the Lord Protector wanted to get ready and let him go early.” The secretary’s frown flashed into a smile. “She doesn’t know about the seats at the theater the Lord Protector arranged for them as a birthday present. They’re presenting Shropsky’s Protector Zhaikyb tonight. As far as I know, the Lord Protector’s just sitting there—probably reading—to be sure he doesn’t undo any of Ahdym’s handiwork. You know what Ahdym would have to say if he did that!”