Through Fiery Trials

by David Weber

  “But that was before you went off to school.” The teasing gleam in Mathylda’s eyes was stronger than it had been. “He hasn’t seen you in almost five years, dear, and you’ve done some growing up since. Some filling out, too, now that I think about it, and—” she cocked her head, studying her niece’s countenance closely “—that acne of yours has cleared up without a trace. More to the point, he’s visted here twice since you left and he’s asked about you each time, you know.”

  “Oh my God! Not twice in five years, Aunt Mathylda?!” Frahncheska widened her eyes. “Why, after paying someone that kind of attention, he’ll have to marry the girl!”

  “I don’t think the situation’s quite that dire,” Mathylda replied dryly. “But he is going to be glad to see you, I think. He’s missed you, just like the rest of us.”

  “Well, I’m home now, and I’m not going anywhere else,” Frahncheska said firmly. “Except maybe back to Tellesberg for a semester or two in a couple of years. Doctor Wyllys is talking about opening a subsidiary of Southland Drilling here in Corisande. Father Ahmbrohs says there should be a good-sized oilfield between Dragon Bay and the Wyvern Ridges.”

  “You’re planning on going into business?”

  “Well, a girl can’t live off her family’s generosity forever, Aunt Mathylda! Besides, you know I can’t resist a challenge. And that’s your and Uncle Hauwyl’s fault.”

  “Guilty, I suppose.” Mathylda shook her head. Then she nodded towards the moored ship. “I know Edwyrd’s not coming ashore until he’s finished arranging for fuel and water, so you and I should go collect Daivyn, tell him hello, and get him safely to the Palace.”

  * * *

  “See, Tobys? All the way to the Palace, and not a shot fired.”

  “This time,” Tobys Raimair replied deflatingly, and Prince Daivyn shook his head.

  “You’re only this way because you’re not going to admit not everyone in Zebediah wants to kill me. Well, and because you have absolutely no sense of humor, too, I suppose.”

  “First, I’m thinking as at least, oh, half a dozen Zebediahans—maybe even a whole dozen—probably don’t want to kill you. Second, didn’t think a sense of humor was required for the job, Your Highness.”

  “It’s not required for a bodyguard, Tobys,” Daivyn told him with a smile. “It is sort of required for a curmudgeonly old nanny … who’s spent too many years keeping me alive.”

  “Imagine I can go on doing that a while longer, assuming you don’t do anything stupid. Your Highness.”

  Daivyn laughed, then stepped out onto the long, covered balcony that ran the entire length of the Ducal Palace’s southern façade. It was positioned to provide as many hours of shade as was physically possible this close to the equator, and a breeze had sprung up, offering a certain blessed relief to the day’s fierce heat.

  “I wish we could’ve come by airship,” he said over his shoulder. “I really like Edwyrd, and Seeker’s a beautiful ship, but an airship would’ve been a lot faster.”

  “At least until it fell out of the sky or blew up,” Raimair agreed. “That’d be exciting, I guess.”

  “I am a reigning prince, you know,” Daivyn told him. “Sometimes I think you and Phylyp have a little trouble remembering that.”

  “Oh? Was it the Earl who put his foot down about that? Here I was thinking it was Princess Irys.”

  “I’m sure I have no idea at all what you’re talking about.”

  “Princess Irys,” Raimair said helpfully. “You remember her, don’t you? Tallish? Chestnut hair? And the fact that, like any sane man, you know better than to cross her? I mean, I’m not going to argue with her, and I don’t rightly remember the last time you did, now that I think about it.

  “I keep forgetting how hot it gets here,” Daivyn said, pointedly changing the subject as Raimair joined him on the balcony. “I think of Manchyr as ‘hot.’ This is something else again!”

  “Something else like, oh, the hinges of hell?” Raimair offered.

  “Actually, yes.” Daivyn smiled at him. “I’m glad it’s cooler now, though. Especially if the Grand Duke’s serious about eating on the terrace.”

  “I misremember the last time His Grace wasn’t serious when it came to eating, Your Highness.” It was Raimair’s turn to smile. “That man was a Marine for too many years to take mealtimes for granted.”

  “Then I guess I’d better change and get my royal posterior down there.”

  * * *

  “Whoa!”

  Daivyn Daikyn braked hard, but not quickly enough to avoid the collision. The unfortunate victim of his impetuosity bounced with an “Oof!”, stumbling backwards down the steep stone steps, arms windmilling, and his hand shot out to catch her before she could fall.

  “Sorry!” he said. “I was in too big a hurry! Are you all right, Frahncheska?”

  “Unbroken, I think,” she replied a bit breathlessly, checking carefully to be sure that was true. The impact had caught her by surprise, and he was a surprisingly solid weight for someone so wiry. On the other hand, she’d just discovered there was quite a lot of muscle packed onto that slim frame. He was a small man, barely two inches taller than she, but his grip on her forearm had caught her effortlessly before she could fall.

  “I really am sorry,” he said contritely.

  He released her arm cautiously as she came back on balance. He really had hit her hard, though, and he watched her carefully as she got herself back together, because it was obvious the impact had shaken her more than she cared to admit.

  She was taller than he remembered, he thought. Then again, she was more than three years younger than he was. She’d been only eighteen—barely sixteen in the years of a planet called Old Terra, of which neither of them had ever heard—when she went off to the College, and he hadn’t seen her in almost five years. As he looked at her, trying to find the little girl who’d played screaming games of tag with him—not to mention a tough shortstop’s position—on visits to Manchyr with her aunt and uncle, he realized she’d changed in those five years.

  In fact, she’d changed a lot.

  “I never did learn to slow down,” he continued. “Except on formal occasions, of course.” He grimaced. “I usually do a better job of not running over people, though.”

  “I know.” She nodded. “On the subject of not running over people, however, where’s the shadow that follows you everywhere and makes sure nobody runs over you?”

  “Tobys?” Daivyn chuckled. “Even Tobys is willing to let me out of his sight here in the Palace. He says the Ducal Guard would never dare face your uncle again after something happened to me on their watch.”

  “Does he?” Frahncheska smiled. “That’s pretty much what Aunt Mathylda says, too. And not just because it would be a major diplomatic faux pas. They actually like you quite a lot, you know.”

  “Well, of course they do.” He released her forearm and offered her his elbow, escorting her the rest of the way down the winding flight of steps to the shaded terrace. Her head topped his shoulder by a comfortable margin, but she did it without towering over him, he noticed, which felt nice for some reason. “I’m a very likable fellow. Except for those unreconstructed Zebediahans who continue to hold my father against me.”

  He said it lightly, but she cocked her head at him. The edge of regret in that last sentence was more poorly hidden than he’d thought.

  “It’s not really so hard to understand, is it?” she asked. “I’m not saying it’s reasonable or that you deserve it, because it isn’t and you don’t. But it’s very human of them.”

  “Oh, I know. And I don’t really blame them for it. I don’t lie awake at home in Manchyr fretting about it, either. It’s only when I’m actually here in Carmyn that I realize how … depressing it is to know so many people I never even met hate me just because of who I chose as a father.”

  “Is it that?” Frahncheska paused, drawing him to a stop at the foot of the stairs in the shade of a massive tree. A much mor
e youthful prince’s initials were carved into its bark somewhere, he recalled, as he looked up into its branches.

  “Excuse me?” He raised an eyebrow, looking down into her gray-green eyes. They were large and dark, and he realized that this truly wasn’t the schoolgirl he’d teased and played tag with in Manchyr or on his much rarer visits to Carmyn.

  “Is it really depressing because they hate you? Or is it because you know they still hate your father?”

  He started to reply quickly, dismissively. But then he stopped and looked at her more intently, and his own eyes narrowed as he considered what she’d just said and realized no one else had ever asked him that question. Not even himself.

  “I … don’t know,” he said after a moment, his tone serious. “I never really thought about that.”

  “Not consciously,” she told him, squeezing his forearm gently. “But I remember you and Irys talking about him when we were all younger. I remember how much you loved him.”

  “I don’t really remember him very clearly anymore,” Daivyn said softly, looking away from her. “I think I remembered him a lot better then, but now he’s just … slipping away. That bothers me, sometimes.”

  “Daivyn, you were only seven when he died. Of course you don’t remember him as clearly as you’d like to! I never even met my father, though. I don’t have any memories of him at all. Or of my mother, really.” He looked at her quickly, and she shook her head. “I regret that, but it’s not like I didn’t have Uncle Hauwyl and Aunt Mathylda! I may technically be an orphan, but trust me, I have parents. Still, maybe that does give me a little more insight. I remember thinking how much I envied you and Irys that you’d at least known your father, and I know her memories of him have to be stronger than yours. But one thing you obviously did remember was that he loved you and you loved him. Maybe to other people he was a prince, and maybe to other people he was a bloodthirsty tyrant, but to you, he was your father. And you never got the chance to grow up with him, or to learn to know him. For that matter, you never had the chance to know whether or not what everyone else says about him was the only truth in his life. Or to defend him, if it wasn’t.”

  His gaze locked with hers, and she shook her head again, more gently.

  “Daivyn, how could it not feel like they’re attacking him when he’s not even here to defend himself? And how could you not feel like that’s an attack on the loving father you knew and not the conquering prince they knew?”

  “You may be right about that,” he said slowly. “There’s certainly some truth to it, at any rate.” He gazed at her for another moment, then shook himself and smiled suddenly. “Is that one of the things they taught you at the College?”

  “I will have you know, Your Highness,” she told him, elevating her nose, “that I studied geology and chemistry at the College. My deep and profound understanding of human nature results solely from the keenness of my powers of observation and the power of my own intellect.”

  “My God, you got that all out without cracking a single smile! I am awed.”

  “And well you should be,” she told him with a laugh.

  He laughed with her, but there was an odd edge to his gaze, as if he’d never truly seen her before. An edge which, for all of the keenness of her powers of observation, went by her unnoticed.

  “I’m pretty sure they’ll be setting up for supper by now,” she went on, still holding his forearm and towing him back into motion towards the stone tables at the center of the terrace. “Come on! I’m starving—let’s go steal some ‘samples’ of the roast lizard!”

  JUNE YEAR OF GOD 913

  .I.

  Zhutiyan, Chynduk Valley, Tiegelkamp Province, Central Harchong.

  “Tangwyn, you have to rest.”

  Yanshwyn Syngpu’s voice was soft enough no one else could have heard it through the background of moans, but her eyes were dark in a deeply worried face as she gazed up at her husband.

  “I can’t. Not yet,” he said.

  “You have to!” she said more fiercely. “How much good will you do any of us if you collapse?!”

  “Not going to collapse.” He produced a smile. “I was lots tireder than this during the Jihad.”

  “I doubt that,” she said flatly. “And when you were more tired than this before, had you also been wounded?” Her tone was even flatter. “And were you the commander in chief?”

  He started to reply quickly, then made himself stop as her eyes dared him to lie about it.

  “No,” he admitted finally. “But that only makes it more important for me to be here. These are my boys, Yanshwyn! I’m the one who got them hurt!”

  “For a smart man, you can be really stupid—did you know that?!” she snapped. “You didn’t get anyone hurt, and a lot more of them would’ve been killed without you! Now I’m done arguing.” She looked at him very, very levelly. “You are going to rest, and Miyang and Father Yngshwan both agree with me on this. The last thing any of us need is you collapsing, and don’t tell me how tired you were during the Jihad!”

  He looked at her, then turned away, looking at the enormous barn where they’d danced that first dance together. The hay bales were gone, and the plank floor had been turned into a hospital. There were over four hundred men on that floor, every one of them wounded, and every one of them wounded under his command.

  And another three or four hundred of their companions had been left behind, dead. Dead or captured, and captured was probably worse, given the “examples” Grand Duke Spring Flower and Baron Qwaidu would make of them. The anguish of that loss ripped through him again, but then he made himself look back down into the exhausted, frightened, loving, furious eyes of his wife.

  “All right,” he conceded finally. “A few hours.”

  “At least eight.” Her voice was a bit less flexible than steel. “And that’s not just from me, you stubborn, stiff-necked, falling-down idiot! It’s from the healers, too. So we’re not going to discuss it … are we?”

  He hovered on the brink of arguing, but he knew she was right. He didn’t want her to be, but wanting never changed anything, now did it?

  “All right,” he said. “Let me just tell Zhou—”

  He broke off, his jaw clenching, and felt himself sway drunkenly, ever so slightly. No one else would’ve noticed, but Yanshwyn did. Her arm went around his waist instantly, and he was astonished yet again by the strength of that delicate-boned body as she steadied him. He closed his eyes and let her hug him for a moment, then shook his head.

  “Let me just tell Baisung I’m going,” he said, and his voice was almost normal. It didn’t fool her. He would never be telling Zhouhan Husan anything ever again. Not after today.

  “I already told him you would be,” she said softly, her own eyes gleaming with tears and her arm squeezing again. “Now come on, Tangwyn. You really do need to rest, and you know it.”

  He nodded wearily, admitting defeat—another defeat—and let her lead him from the barn.

  * * *

  The moonless night outside the town hall was dark and still, pressing down on Zhutiyan like a hand. The window was open. They could hear the sounds of insects, of night wyverns, of the wind. It was all so … peaceful. Normal. But the reality was something else entirely.

  “So how bad is it, really?” Mayor Ou-zhang said, looking around his study.

  No one answered the mayor for a second or two, but then Syngpu inhaled deeply. Yanshwyn had been serious; she’d put him to bed and she’d left him there. Not for eight hours, but for almost ten, and the fact that he’d slept that long proved how badly he’d needed to. Despite that, he felt almost worse than when he’d gone down, at least physically. The shoulder wound was worse than he’d been willing to admit to himself. He was fortunate there’d been no bone damage and there were no early signs of infection, either, but the healers had given him Pasquale’s holy hell for how hard he’d pushed it. They’d also loaded him up with pain root—which might have had a little to do with how long he’d s
lept—and made him swear he’d use the sling. Worse, they’d made him promise Yanshwyn he would.

  Beside that, the hip was only a bruise. Enough to make walking painful and slow, but no worse than that.

  Which meant that now, as he looked out into the night from the same study window he’d looked out that first day, the mayor’s question rolling through his brain, he was rested and fresh enough to feel the other, greater pain of so many dead and wounded. That was a pain no medicine could quell. But Yanshwyn had been right about the other reasons he’d needed to rest, and he drew the strength of his wife around him as his eyes came back from the window to the people sitting in that study with him.

  “It’s not good, and that’s a fact,” he said grimly. “It’s not so terrible just now, aside from all the lads we’ve lost, but looking forward, it’s not good, Zaipau. Not good.”

  The weary, strained faces around him tightened, but he owed them the truth.

  “I sat down with Baisung, after Yanshwyn finally let me out of bed.” His wife looked up, her pen pausing for just a moment, and he smiled at her. “He was almost as tired as I was when the lot of you made me turn in,” he continued, then, “but we’re pretty much in agreement about what happened.

  “The nub is that Spring Flower and Qwaidu must’ve gotten a shipment of new-model rifles from Yu-kwau after all. We captured some of ’em. Most of them’re knockoffs of the St. Kylmahn, just like ours. But a couple of them’re like the ones the Charisians were using at the end of the Jihad, with magazines that hold six rounds.” He shook his head, his eyes bleak. “Don’t know how many of those they’ve got, but any are too many.