Through Fiery Trials

by David Weber

  You might be doing the man a disservice, Zherohmy, he reminded himself. If he was, however, it was a very minor disservice, as Vicar Haarahld’s instructions had made abundantly clear before he set out.

  But there’d be time enough for that, he thought, beaming with genuine pleasure as Baron Wind Song stepped up to him through the blare of trumpets. He extended his hand, and the baron bent, kissing his ring, then straightened.

  “It’s my pleasure—mine and my men’s—to welcome you to Five Islands Station, Your Grace,” he said and smiled, waving one hand at the escort standing at rigid attention. Their uniforms were immaculate, their perfectly maintained weapons gleamed in the bright afternoon sun, and every one of them had the solid look of the veterans they were. “The farthest west station on the Zion Line … for now.” Wind Song’s smile grew broader. “Lord of Horse Rungwyn is surveying the route to Chyzan even as we speak.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Awstyn replied, shaking his head with admiration. “I’m impressed, My Lord. Very impressed.”

  “It wouldn’t have been possible without Mother Church,” Wind Song said much more somberly. “Believe me, every man in the Host understands how much we owe to the Grand Vicar and the Vicarate.”

  His last sentence said more than just the words it contained, and Awstyn nodded.

  “I understand, My Lord.”

  “I’m glad.” The baron inhaled, then straightened and gestured to the waiting horse-drawn carriages. “My uncle is eager to see you, Your Grace. I had to argue with him to convince him to wait for us at the palace.”

  “He’s not well?” Awstyn’s eyes darkened with concern.

  “He’s not ill, Your Grace,” Wind Song said quickly. “But … he’s not as young as he was, either. He turned seventy-one in April, and we worry about him—every man in the Host. He’s that kind of man.”

  “I understand, My Lord,” Awstyn repeated softly, in a very different tone. He signed Langhorne’s scepter, then put his hand gently on Wind Song’s shoulder. “In that case, let’s not leave him wondering what’s become of me!”

  * * *

  Tyshu Daiyang had been only sixty years old when he assumed command of the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels. That was quite young for someone of his rank in the Imperial Harchongese Army, and he’d been a physically robust man—a handsome man, with sleek, thick hair, darker even than usual for a Harchongian, and the powerful hands and wrists of a swordsman. But now, twelve years later, his hair had gone completely silver and his once robust physique had grown increasingly frail.

  It wasn’t just the years, Awstyn thought as Mangzhee Zhang, Earl Rainbow Waters’ majordomo, escorted him and Baron Wind Song into the earl’s working office. The earl had spent his strength like fire looking out for “his” men when their emperor and their Church cuffed them aside.

  It showed.

  Zhang, on the other hand, radiated a certain indestructibility. Not so very many years ago, he’d been Regimental Sergeant Major Zhang, and most of Rainbow Waters’ staff still referred to him as “the Sergeant Major.” He looked like a sergeant major, too, although he’d been surprisingly literate for a peasant when he was swept up for the Mighty Host. His parish priest, who’d had pronounced Reformist tendencies for a Harchongese cleric, had given him extra tutoring, and he’d shown a strong aptitude for the mathematics made available by the new “arabic numerals.”

  He was also fiercely devoted to Rainbow Waters, and his attitude was obviously more protective than the last time Awstyn had visited the earl in the Temple Lands, before the Rebellion. That was an ominous sign, the vicar thought, as Rainbow Waters laid a hand on his desk and unobtrusively used his arm to lever himself to his feet.

  “Your Grace,” he said.

  There was genuine welcome and warmth in his voice, and it, at least, was as strong as ever. Awstyn crossed quickly to the desk, trying to conceal his concern as he held out his hand. The tremor in the earl’s fingers as he took the hand before kissing the ring was almost—almost—more imagined than real.

  “My Lord,” he said, clasping forearms briefly but warmly after the ceremonial kiss. “It’s good to see you.”

  “And to see you, Your Grace.” Rainbow Waters inclined his head, then waved gracefully at the comfortable armchair at the corner of his desk. “Please, sit.”

  Awstyn sat rather more quickly than he might have under other circumstances, because he knew Rainbow Waters would remain standing until he did. He refused to embarrass the earl by urging him to get off his feet, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t speed the process.

  “Thank you, My Lord.”

  He settled into the chair and Zhang offered whiskey with as much quiet efficiency as if he’d spent his entire life in service to one of the great families of Harchong rather than working a rocky patch of farmland in southern Thomas Province. Awstyn accepted a glass gratefully. Rainbow Waters had always kept an excellent cellar, even in exile, and the blended whiskey went down like thick, smooth, biting honey.

  Rainbow Waters took a smaller sip from his own glass, then tipped back in his chair and Awstyn considered their surroundings.

  The earl had taken over the Archbishop of Maddox’s palace, across the city’s central square from the cathedral. The prelate was currently ensconced in Yu-kwau with Archbishop Kangsya, who’d become the primate of a breakaway church, whatever he might say in his official correspondence with the Temple. Since he no longer needed a house in his archbishopric and the earl did need an administrative center for the area under his protection, Rainbow Waters had availed himself of the archbishop’s residence. It was big enough to house his entire administration and its staff, and like more than one archbishop’s or bishop’s palace in Harchong, it had been built with an eye towards security and defense.

  The earl had an official office one floor up from the magnificent foyer, but that was mainly for show. He preferred something smaller and more informal for his working days, so he’d converted what had originally been a small side chapel off the archbishop’s library. It retained most of its original sumptuous furnishings, which surprised Awstyn a little bit. He would have expected a vengeful peasantry to have looted it as an act of defiance to the Church which had sided with its oppressors for so long. Langhorne knew it had happened to enough other churches and monasteries and convents.

  “How was your journey?” Rainbow Waters asked after a moment.

  “Amazingly smooth and efficient,” Awstyn said with genuine enthusiasm. “Not as smooth or as comfortable as a well-fitted barge, but far faster. And we made the entire trip without a single mechanical problem! I think that may have been even more impressive to me than the speed. And I noticed that the … the ‘double track’—” he paused for a moment, making sure he had the right term, and the earl nodded “—has been completed for almost half the entire route.”

  “It’s true the men have done amazingly well.” Rainbow Waters smiled warmly, his lined face showing his genuine affection for and pride in his men. “We trained some excellent engineers during the Jihad, and I’m sure all of them find building railways and bridges far more satisfying than laying land bombs or building earthworks.”

  “I know they do,” Awstyn said sincerely. “You—and they—have a great deal to be proud of, My Lord. Not only have you reestablished order and something like genuine public safety in so much of Langhorne, Maddox, and Stene, but with the railways and the other projects, you’re giving these people something even more precious: hope.”

  “I like to think so.” Rainbow Waters’ voice was soft and he turned his chair sideways to look out the window at the brilliant blue sky, the peaceful pedestrians and traffic of the central square, the towering steeples of the cathedral facing the palace he’d appropriated. “I like to think at least something good could come out of this.”

  “My Lord, it’s not given to mere mortals to accomplish tasks that would daunt even an Archangel by merely snapping our fingers. All we can do is the best we can do, a
nd that’s what you’ve always done. The Grand Vicar and Vicar Haarahld didn’t send me all the way out here just to represent them officially on the first Zion-to-Five Islands automotive. That would probably have been enough for them to ship my deplorably youthful carcass off, you understand,” he smiled broadly. “But they’ve also sent messages and reports, and there are several issues they wish you and me to consider jointly while I’m here. To be honest, the Grand Vicar and the Chancellor are increasingly of the opinion that it’s nearing the time for you and your Host to officially proclaim your independence of the Emperor.”

  Rainbow Waters’ face tightened. He stayed motionless, still gazing out the window, for several seconds while the steady ticking of the clock on the mantel sounded clearly in the quiet.

  Awstyn leaned back, letting him digest that last sentence, and for once he was grateful the Vicarate had passed over him when it named Haarahld Zhessop to succeed Tymythy Symkyn as chancellor. As one of Symkyn’s closest assistants, Awstyn might have aspired to the post himself, but he’d been only forty-one at the time. The vicars had wanted more age, more maturity—less impetuosity, though they’d been too tactful to say so—in the office of Mother Church’s chancellor, and Zhessop had been an excellent choice. An experienced diplomat and a good man, he was also sixty-one when he was chosen and he’d made it quietly clear to Tymythy Rhobair that he intended to step down by the time he was seventy. By then, Awstyn would be fifty, more than old enough to assume the post. And in the meantime, he would function as Zhessop’s senior deputy, accruing additional experience along the way.

  But for now, he was still in the position of someone who got to advise rather than take responsibility, and there were times—like now—when he was guiltily aware that he was just as happy with that state of affairs. To be fair, he thought Zhessop and the Grand Vicar were right about the timing, but that wasn’t going to make the decision any more palatable for Rainbow Waters.

  “May I take it from the fact that you’ve brought this up that His Holiness and the Chancellor are … advising me to make that proclamation?” the earl asked finally.

  “My Lord, you’re the effective ruler of almost a quarter of North Harchong,” Awstyn said. “All of us regret the circumstances which made it necessary for you to take the steps you’ve taken, but before God and the Archangels, you had no choice.” The earl looked at him, and he met those dark eyes steadily. “God—and Mother Church—placed you in a horrendous position, My Lord, and despite that, you’ve always comported yourself as a man of honor and as a faithful son of Mother Church. Neither the Grand Vicar nor the Chancellor are suggesting you take this step to … enhance your own position or your own authority. Their belief, however, is that your name and reputation, more than anything else, are truly the glue that holds East Harchong together.”

  Rainbow Waters half raised one hand, as if in a gesture of protest, but Awstyn shook his head.

  “No, My Lord—it’s not your men. Or, rather, it is them, but only because you lead them and because so many of them would rather die than disappoint you. Do you think Mother Church’s confessors don’t know how they talk about you? ‘The Earl,’ they say, the same way they called Grand Vicar Rhobair ‘the Good Shepherd.’ I’m not saying they think of you the same way they thought of him. Don’t think that for a moment! But they trust you, they honor you. In fact, most of them love you, because they know you’ve always taken their part, looked after them. Langhorne knows how many of the Mighty Host’s officers abandoned them, took Emperor Waisu’s offer of passage home to their families, their lands and estates … as long as they came home without their men. You didn’t. Instead, you fought for them. They know that, and that’s why it’s your authority, more than anything else, which prevents many of your men from seeking vengeance just as mercilessly as any of the rebels who may have fled from their bayonets.”

  Rainbow Waters lowered his hand. He gazed at the vicar for a moment, then shrugged and sat back once more, placing his forearms neatly along the armrests.

  “There may be … something to that,” he said finally. “The Archangels know they needed someone to take their side after they fought their hearts out! It shames me to say that until the Jihad, I was as oblivious to the circumstances of their lives as most of my fellows. I’m not anymore.” He smiled with brief, bitter whimsy. “I suppose something good can come even out of something like the Jihad.

  “But I’m not a king, not an emperor, Your Grace.”

  “Uncle,” Baron Wind Song said, speaking for the first time, “no one says you are. But I think I understand what the Grand Vicar and the Chancellor—and Vicar Zherohmy—are saying.”

  Rainbow Waters looked at him, one eyebrow raised, and Wind Song shrugged.

  “Uncle, you—you and the Host—have accomplished so much. The population of the area under your protection is actually greater now than it was before the Rebellion, and you know the reason for that as well as I do. It’s because anyone who could, nobles as well as peasants, have fled Central Harchong to join us here because they know you and the Host will protect them. And the Host looks to you, not to the Emperor. Not even to the Grand Vicar. To you. And what they hear coming out of Yu-kwau is the Emperor’s declaration of war on you—and through you, on all of them—simply because they stopped the killing. That doesn’t even count the railways, the canals our engineers have rebuilt, the housing we’ve thrown up, the draft animals and plows we’ve brought in. They stopped the killing, Uncle, and that gives them a sense of pride even their record in the Jihad couldn’t. But they’ve seen too much, had too much taken away from them. They need the assurance that they won’t be … sold out in the end this time the way they were last time. That their officers and the civil officials working with them aren’t still proclaiming their loyalty to the Crown in hopes of finding pardon from the Crown … and leaving them twisting in the wind when Zhyou-Zhwo and that bastard Snow Peak finally get around to invading.”

  “I would never do that!” Rainbow Waters snapped.

  “Of course you wouldn’t, Uncle. Do you think I, of all people, don’t know that? And the men in the ranks don’t think you would, either. But, forgive me for saying this, you aren’t getting any younger.” Rainbow Waters’ eyes darkened, not with anger but with some other emotion. “What I think the Grand Vicar and the Chancellor are seeking here is an open proclamation—one that will burn the bridges of the entire Host, whatever happens to you—to prevent whoever succeeds you from doing that to them.”

  Rainbow Waters gazed at his nephew for almost a full minute, then turned his eyes back to Awstyn.

  “Is that His Holiness’ thinking?”

  “In large part, yes, My Lord.” Awstyn raised his hand, waving it between them. “Oh, there are other aspects to it, as well. You and the Host are doing incredibly well here, but the truth is that all our reports are that the United Provinces are accomplishing even more, courtesy in no small part to the ‘Ahrmahk Plan’ and the investment it’s made possible.”

  Awstyn kept his expression serene, his voice calm, despite his ongoing personal unhappiness over the souls he knew were inevitably straying to the Charisian side of the schism as a consequence of all the Empire and Church of Charis had done for them and their families.

  “Many potential investors, in both the Temple Lands and the Border States who might otherwise see opportunities for investment here in East Harchong—the kind of investment you need if you hope to maintain the upward trajectory you’ve managed to create—hesitate to seize those opportunities because they fear that if they invest with you, and if the Emperor ultimately reasserts his authority in these provinces, all of their investments will be lost. By the same token, I doubt any of them genuinely believe Snow Peak and his army could retake East Harchong from you and your veterans, especially with Mother Church, Vicar Allayn, and the Army of God standing at your back. If you formally declare the independence of East Harchong, much of that investment will begin moving your direction. And on a legal fron
t, Mother Church, the Temple Lands, and the Border States, could then open formal diplomatic relations with you, leading to all manner of other possibilities.

  “No one who knows you believes for an instant that you’ve done all of this—” the youthful vicar waved his arm to indicate not just the office but the city and the province beyond it “—for personal power or even to punish Zhyou-Zhwo for the edict that exiled you and all your men. We aren’t urging you to declare East Harchong’s independence so you can set up as some sort of emperor in Zhyou-Zhwo’s place. Our concern is that even now, years after the Rebellion’s start, so much of North Harchong is in limbo. The United Provinces are beginning to restore order in the west and expanding slowly into the western reaches of Tiegelkamp, and all of our reports indicate they’ve already accepted that there can be no return to the Crown’s authority. Now you’re doing the same thing in the east, and however much you may recoil from the thought, it’s time to make your break with Yu-kwau formal and official, as well.”

  “Uncle, he’s right,” Wind Song said quietly. “And you know as well as I do that no other outcome’s ultimately possible. Langhorne knows we’ve discussed it often enough!”

  “Perhaps.”

  Rainbow Waters raised one hand, pinched the bridge of his nose, massaged his eyebrows. Then he lowered it again and looked at Awstyn.

  “You and Medyng may well be right, Your Grace. I don’t know how much additional impact a formal declaration could have, but God knows none of the Host could ever return to the Crown’s authority in safety. And, to be honest, the very thought of allowing the same people who created the conditions for the Rebellion in the first place to return to their places here sickens me. But I’ve been so clear, so forceful, on the point that I’m not seeking a crown of my own. What you’re suggesting is, in many ways, a renunciation of that promise on my part.”