Through Fiery Trials

by David Weber

  “Oh, Father would’ve loved to hear that!” Lady Whytmyn said with a delighted laugh of her own. “Because he said the only admiral who ever personally scared him because of the way ‘he kicked my arse,’ if you’ll pardon the language, was named Ahrmahk.”

  “Then I guess they were well matched,” Alahnah said with a grin.

  “Yes, I think they were,” Lady Whytmyn agreed, then reached out and drew the tall young man at her side forward.

  “Princess Alahnah, may I present my son, Lywys? I’m afraid his sister, Zhudyth, is over there with her father, speaking to your father at the moment. I understand twins run in your family, as well?”

  “Yes, they do, My Lady,” Alahnah agreed. “And in my brother Hektor’s family, too, for that matter.”

  “So I understand.” Lady Whytmyn shook her head. “I can’t imagine how your mother manages five children in addition to all her other duties. Just two were enough to drive me to distraction!”

  “Nannies, My Lady,” Alahnah told her. “Lots of nannies.”

  Lady Whytmyn chuckled, and Alahnah smiled at her before she turned to greet the older woman’s son.

  “Your Highness,” Earl Thirsk’s grandson murmured, bending over her offered hand to kiss it.

  At thirteen, Alahnah’s height had shot upward—she was going to be very tall for a Charisian woman—but despite his grandfather’s small size, Lywys Whytmyn was already approaching six feet in height. Of course, he was also almost seventeen.

  He also had an engaging smile, dark brown eyes, and broad shoulders, she noticed. And the hand which had taken hers wasn’t the soft, manicured hand of a courtier, either.

  “Master Whytmyn,” she said, smiling up at him as he straightened. But her smile faded and she squeezed his hand gently. “I’m so sorry about your grandfather. I liked him very much and I’ll always be glad I had the chance to meet him.”

  He gazed down at her for a moment, his head slightly cocked, then smiled much more broadly back down at her.

  “I’m glad you liked him, Your Highness, because I’m pretty sure he liked you, too,” he said, and glanced at his mother. “I think your seamanship impressed him. Grandfather always did say you can tell a lot about someone by the way he—or she—handles herself at sea. And he said you handled yourself very well. In fact, he said you had a seaman’s eye, didn’t he, Mother?”

  “Yes, he did.” Lady Whytmyn’s smile was sadder than her son’s as she looked at Alahnah and nodded. “He laughed himself sick over the way you and Seijin Merlin stole his wind in that last race across King’s Harbor, Your Highness.”

  “Well, I am Charisian,” she pointed out with a twinkle. “As Father’s fond of pointing out, that means brine flows in our veins, not mere blood. And having Seijin Merlin for a godfather didn’t hurt! Besides, we knew the tide set better than he did. If we hadn’t, I’m pretty sure he’d’ve pinned our ears back.”

  “He certainly would have tried,” Lady Whytmyn told her with a chuckle. “If there was anything in the world my father hated more than losing, I never figured out what it was.”

  “That’s what my father—Merlin, I mean—most admired about the Earl, I think, My Lady,” Stefyny Athrawes said. She’d accompanied Alahnah as both lady-in-waiting and chaperone, and although she was only twenty years old, her level gray eyes were sharp and observant. “He said to me once that anyone with a single ounce of quit in him would have just rolled over and died in the Earl’s place. But your father?” She shook her head, those gray eyes dark. “Not him. Not in a thousand years, Father said. Not in a thousand years.”

  “That’s—” Lady Whytmyn paused and cleared her throat, then smiled mistily at Stefyny. “That’s very good of the Seijin. And I think he’s right. But until that awful night aboard Saint Frydhelm, there was nothing Father could do. Not as long as Clyntahn had me and Stefyny and Zhoahna and the kids to hold over his head. Seijin Gwyliwr and Seijin Cleddyf changed that, and I’ll be forever grateful to them—and to Seijin Merlin—for that. Charis—”

  Her voice broke again, and she reached out to lay a hand on her son’s shoulder, then looked at Alahnah again.

  “Charis has been far kinder to my family than I would have imagined was possible, Your Highness,” she said. “We’re alive today—all of us—only because of what your mother and father and the seijins did for us. Don’t think we’ll ever forget that.”

  “Having met your father, My Lady,” Alahnah said, looking into her eyes, “the honor was ours. As Father’s always said, ‘Here I Stand,’ and he told me once that he could never have stood beside a man he admired more than he did your father.”

  “Then his and your mother’s hearts are as generous as they are wise,” Lady Whytmyn told her. “And sometimes—sometimes, Your Highness—something wonderful can come out of all of the grief and the pain and the loss.”

  * * *

  “What do you think of Stefyny and Hailyn’s proposal?” Cayleb Ahrmahk asked, much later that evening over the SNARC-linked coms.

  “I think it’s a really good idea,” Nahrmahn Baytz said promptly from Nimue’s Cave. “In fact, I can’t find a downside however hard I look!”

  “I can,” the Duke of Serabor disagreed. He sat in his Maikelberg office, tipped back and nursing a cup of cherrybean while he gazed out at a bleaker, far colder morning. Like Nynian, Koryn Gahrvai, and a growing number of the inner circle’s members, he’d received Owl’s new wetware. That was a point which tended to irritate Cayleb, since so far it had been impossible for him or Sharleyan to disappear long enough for the same treatment.

  “What?” Nahrmahn’s image blinked at Serabor and his tone was slightly affronted. “What downside?”

  “Oh, come on, Nahrmahn!” Serabor replied without ever moving his lips. He sipped more cherrybean. “I’ll admit I think the upsides outnumber the down, but just exactly how do you think the folks in Siddarmark who’re already less than delighted with Charis will react when they find out Earl Thirsk’s grandchildren are going to be educated in Charis?”

  “There’s not much we can do about anyone bigoted enough against Dohlar to be worried about that, Kynt,” Domynyk Staynair pointed out from Tellesberg.

  “Probably not,” Serabor acknowledged. “Doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen, though. Especially with Rahnyld’s brainstorm.”

  “Which of his brainstorms?” Sharleyan asked.

  “Either of them!” Serabor said. “The notion of sending Rahnyldah to Charis along with the Mahkzwails and the Whytmyns will put more than a few noses out of joint back home in Dohlar, too. Some of ’em will resent the implication that Dohlaran schools aren’t good enough and some of ’em will see it as one more sign we’ve already got way too much influence in Gorath, but I’m not too worried about that. What I am concerned about is the anti-Charis crowd in Siddarmark, because a lot of that bunch will see this as one more example of our letting Rahnyld ‘suck up to us’ at the Republic’s expense. You know none of them will believe for a minute it was her idea, not his, don’t you, Sharley?”

  “Probably not,” Sharleyan sighed, remembering the glow in Rahnyldah’s eyes when she found out where Thirsk’s grandchildren would be completing their education.

  It was obvious Rahnyldah had enjoyed her visit to Tellesberg even more than any of them had suspected at the time, and it seemed likely that had more to do with her reaction than any logical comparison of the merits of the schools involved. By the same token, though, Stefyny Mahkzwail and Hailyn Whytmyn and their husbands had a point. Charisian schools—not just those affiliated with the Royal College, but those administered by the Church of Charis, as well—were the best in the world … and getting better steadily. They weren’t the only parents who wanted to avail their children of that opportunity, although it helped in their case that they’d quietly converted to the Church of Charis during their time in hiding with the Sisters of Saint Kohdy. Rahnyldah just as obviously wanted the same opportunity, although Sharleyan suspected at least part of
that was because of how much she and Alahnah had liked one another.

  Queen Mother Mathylda had been more than a little doubtful about the notion. Unlike Thirsk’s daughters and their families, she remained firmly attached to the Church of God Awaiting, and she was uncomfortable at the notion of exposing her youngest child to the allure of the Church of Charis. She’d made that clear, although she’d been very tactful about it, and Sharleyan wondered if she’d been surprised when her son overruled her. For her part, Sharleyan couldn’t decide how much of Rahnyld’s decision came from his obviously deep love for his baby sister and how much came from the cold calculation that granting her wish would weave yet another strand into the growing net of common interests binding Charis and Dohlar. Personally, Sharleyan was perfectly content with both possibilities, but it would be interesting to know just how Rahnyld had seen it.

  “Of course some of them are going to think exactly that,” she said finally. “And the reason they are is that, while I wouldn’t use the phrase ‘sucking up,’ that’s clearly part of his thinking. He’s a smart young man; he’s had good teachers who taught him to look forward, not back, when it comes to his kingdom’s best interests; and he knows perfectly well how well Rahnyldah and Alahnah have hit it off. Of course he recognizes the advantages of sending us his sister … and of ‘encouraging’ that friendship with Alahnah at the same time.”

  “I don’t see a downside there,” Nahrmahn put in. “It’s not like Alahnah’s going to let friendship for Rahnyldah influence any decisions she makes on the far distant day when she inherits the crown. I mean, if you and Cayleb were doddering old wrecks likely to be joining me here in the Cave anytime soon, that might be worth worrying about. But now? Pffft! In the meantime, though, having her in our corner, bending Rahnyld’s ear in our favor if we need it, isn’t likely to be a bad thing, now is it?”

  “Probably not, Your Highness,” a much younger voice put in. “And I know Alahnah would be delighted to see her in Tellesberg. Of course, she might not be the only person Alahnah would be happy to see in Tellesberg.”

  “Excuse me?” Sharleyan glanced at Cayleb, then at the fair-haired, gray-eyed image projected onto her contacts. “That sounded sufficiently … mysterious, Stefyny!”

  “Oh, it’s probably not anything to worry about, Your Majesty,” Stefyny Athrawes told her. “It’s just that she said something to me before she headed off to bed.”

  “Like what?” Sharleyan looked at Cayleb again. “She didn’t say anything to me when she kissed me good night.”

  “Well, like I say, it’s probably not real important,” Stefyny said, smiling slightly. “She did mention, though, that she thought Lywys Whytmyn was ‘really cute.’ In fact, now that I think of it, I believe what she actually said was ‘really, really cute.’”

  “Oh, Lord!” Sharleyan leaned forward, covering her eyes with one hand and shaking her head as Cayleb laughed.

  “Don’t worry, Sharleyan,” Nynian Athrawes said over her implants. She sat before the mirror in her bedchamber, brushing her long lustrous hair, and smiled. “She’s thirteen. By the time she’s an old lady like Stefyny—” she grinned as her adopted daughter’s image stuck out its tongue at her “—she’s going to’ve thought a dozen young men were ‘really, really cute’!”

  “You are not making this any better, Nynian,” Sharleyan told her without ever uncovering her eyes. She sat that way for several seconds, then drew a deep breath and shook her head.

  “Thank you ever so much for that bit of information, Stefyny,” she said. “Not that it changes the overall calculus, because Kynt’s still right that the ‘never-Charis’ element in Siddarmark’s bound to see it as an effort by Rahnyld to curry favor with us.”

  “Exactly. And then there was that other little matter,” Serabor said.

  “I’m afraid Kynt has a point about that, too,” Maikel Staynair put in.

  “I’m sure he does,” Cayleb said. “I just wish he didn’t make so damned much sense.”

  “Well, we knew it was coming,” Duke Delthak pointed out. “We got enough SNARC imagery of Thirsk discussing it with him, not to mention with Fern and Dragon Island. And like Sharleyan says, he’s smart. I do wish I knew how much of this is part of Thirsk’s ongoing policy of rapprochement with Charis and how much of it’s a deliberate attempt to drive the wedge between us and Siddarmark deeper, though.”

  “I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of both of those involved,” Cayleb acknowledged. “I don’t think he’s so much trying to cut Siddarmark out of the equation as it is that he’s trying to cut Dohlar into it, though.” He waved one hand impatiently as his wife raised her eyebrows at him. “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think he’s looking at hurting Siddarmark; I think he’s only looking at helping Dohlar and that happens to come at Siddarmark’s expense. And let’s be honest here. It’s not like Siddarmark wasn’t already walking wounded!”

  A soft sound of agreement flowed over the com from more than one person, and Merlin Athrawes looked across the bedchamber at Nynian. She saw him in the mirror, stopped brushing her hair, and looked over her shoulder at him. Then she sighed.

  “No, it’s not,” she agreed over her wetware. “And I see a lot of possible advantages in taking Rahnyld up on his offer. But the timing would be really bad.”

  “He hasn’t made an actual ‘offer,’” Merlin pointed out. “So far, he’s only speculating about possibilities. Obviously, he’d like us to make an offer, but he’s too smart to push it if we don’t, I think.”

  “I agree,” Cayleb said. “But he’s right, just like Thirsk was. Dohlar does have a greater natural interest in the canal, and Dohlar’s economy is in a hell of a lot better shape than Siddarmark’s. I think he’s a little optimistic about how quickly he could get the bonds out and sold, but the money’s there.”

  “But if word gets out that we’re seriously contemplating replacing Siddarmark with Dohlar, you can pretty much write off Lord Protector Klymynt’s reelection in August,” Serabor said. “To be honest, that’s what I’m most afraid of here—the downside I was talking about, Nahrmahn. As long as all anyone knows about is the proposal to educate a bunch of kids in Charis, I don’t see a problem. But if someone suggests we’re planning on ‘selling out’ the Republic while Myllyr’s running for reelection, he’s toast, and you know it.”

  “We’re not contemplating anything of the sort,” Sharleyan objected.

  “We’re not contemplating it yet, love,” Cayleb sighed. “But as Nahrmahn is overly fond of pointing out upon occasion, the clock’s ticking. Under our worst-case assumption, we’ve only got another seven years or so before the ‘Archangels’ turn up again.” More than one face tightened as he reminded them of that unpalatable fact. “I know the Canal’s more of a cherry on top than a critical component of our strategy, but it’s a pretty important cherry, I think. It would be a huge boost to the spread of technology, if only because of the new construction techniques we’d be introducing. The timing won’t be all that significant either way, if it turns out Schueler’s clock did start with the end of the War Against the Fallen, not the ‘Creation,’ and we’ve got another seventy or eighty years to work with. But even if that’s the case, the sooner we get started the better in a lot of ways.”

  “You’re right,” Sharleyan agreed, “but so are Nynian and Kynt. I think we almost have to agree to Thirsk’s family’s suggestion about his grandchildren, and I don’t think we can do that without inviting Rahnyldah along, too. There are too many strategic and diplomatic positives on that side of the balance, even without looking at our moral responsibilities. But I think we need to make it quietly clear, not just to Rahnyld, but also to Fern, Archbishop Staiphan, and certainly Dragon Island that it’s essential there be no public discussion about Dohlaran involvement in the canal at least until after the August elections. Does anyone disagree with that?”

  .IV.

  Zhyndow-Sochal Road, Grand Duchy of Spring Flower, Tiegelkamp Province, North Har
chong.

  “No, the bastards aren’t getting away this time!” Captain of Foot Rung snapped. “Lord of Foot Qwaidu will have my arse if that happens, but before he does, I’ll have yours. Is that clear enough for you, Captain of Swords?”

  Captain of Swords Mahngzhwun Cheng looked back at his company commander and for a moment something unfortunate hovered near the tip of his tongue. He managed to restrain it without too much difficulty by reminding himself of what had happened to others who had expressed themselves too forcefully to Zhungdau Rung.

  “It’s clear, Sir,” the captain of swords said instead. “But I don’t know if we can catch them. They’re moving fast, and I’ve only got two of my platoons up.” He grimaced in disgust. “I’d like to know who warned them about which way we were coming!”

  Rung glared at him, but the captain of swords had a point. Someone had tipped off the band of refugees, and it had to have been one of Grand Duke Spring Flower’s other serfs. Whoever it was, he needed to be roasted head-down over a slow fire, preferably after watching the rest of his family enjoy the same experience. Especially since the grand duke was going to be more than a little unhappy if so many fugitives slipped through his troops’ fingers.

  “Look,” he said now, jabbing a finger at the map spread on the tree stump between them. “They ran from Maichi, and they must’ve known the Grand Duke’s shifted the court back to Fangkau, because all the evidence suggests they were following the main road from there to Sochal. They had to’ve figured they could sneak around the town down some of those damned farm tracks without anyone noticing them with so many of our people pulled to Fangkau … until some fucking wyvern whistled in their ear. I wish we knew exactly when they realized they’d been reported and we were already on the hunt, but we don’t. We do know they decided to go by way of Shanglau, but the messenger wyverns from Third Company say they aren’t on the Shanglau-Sochal road. So they have to have turned south at Shanglau and taken the long way around, towards Sung-tai. They may have turned north again, tried to move through Ranlai, but we’re right in their path if they come that way. So that means the only way they could give us the slip would be to head up this way—” his fingertip traced the brown line of a road … of sorts “—between Half-Moon Wood and the Wyvern. Right?”