How Firm a Foundation

by David Weber

  “I don’t blame you.” Cayleb’s tone was more sober than it had been. “Mind you, I don’t think it would bother me as much as I think it’s bothering you. Probably because I’ve already had the questionable pleasure of meeting him. In a lot of ways, I wish I could have taken this one off your shoulders, but—”

  He shrugged, and Sharleyan nodded. They’d discussed it often enough, and the logic which had sent her here was at least half her own. The world—and especially the Empire of Charis—needed to understand she and Cayleb genuinely were corulers … and that his was not the only hand which could wield a sword when it was necessary. She’d demonstrated that clearly enough to her own Chisholmians, and as a very young monarch ruling in Queen Ysbet’s shadow she’d learned that sometimes the sword was necessary.

  And when it is, flinching is the worst thing—for everyone—you can possibly do, she thought grimly. I learned that lesson the hard way, too.

  “Well, you can’t take it off me,” she told him philosophically. “And it’s later here than it is where you are, and your daughter has gotten over her snit over the local temperature and is about to begin demanding her supper. So I think it’s probably time I went and saw to that minor detail. Good night, everyone.”

  * * *

  Sharleyan Ahrmahk sat very still as the prisoner was brought before her. He was neatly, even soberly, dressed, without the sartorial magnificence which had graced his person in better days, and he looked acutely nervous, to say the least.

  Tohmys Symmyns was a man of average height and average build, with thinning dark hair, a prominent nose, and eyes that reminded Sharleyan of a dead kraken’s. He’d grown a beard during his incarceration, and it didn’t do a thing for him. The smudges of white in his hair and the strands of white in the dark beard made him look even older than his age but without affording him any veneer of wisdom.

  Of course, that could be at least partly because of how much she knew about him, she reflected grimly.

  She sat in the throne which had once been his, her crown of state on her head, dressed in white and wearing the violet sash of a judge, and his muddy eyes widened at the sight of that sash.

  Idiot, she thought coldly. Just what did you expect was going to happen?

  He wasn’t manacled—she and Cayleb had been prepared to make that much concession to his high rank—but the two Army sergeants walking behind him wore the expressions of men who devoutly wished he’d give them an excuse to lay hands on him.

  At least he wasn’t that stupid, and he came to a halt at the foot of the throne room’s dais. He stared at her for a moment, then fell to both knees and prostrated himself before her.

  She let him lie there for long, endless seconds, and as she did, she felt a sort of cruel pleasure which surprised her. It shamed her, too, that pleasure, yet she couldn’t deny it. And the truth was that if anyone deserved the torment of uncertainty and fear which must be pulsing through him at that moment, Tohmys Symmyns was that anyone.

  The silence stretched out, and she felt the tension of the nobles and clerics who’d been summoned to bear witness to what was about to happen. They lined the walls of the throne room, there to observe, not speak, and that was another reason she let him wait. He himself would have no opportunity to learn from what happened here this day; others might.

  “Tohmys Symmyns,” she said finally, and his head snapped up as she used his name and not the title which had been his for so long, “you have been accused of treason. The charges have been considered by a jury of the lords secular and temporal of the Empire and of the Church of Charis. The evidence has been carefully sifted, and you have been given the opportunity to testify in your own defense and to name and summon any witnesses of your choice. That jury’s verdict has been rendered. Is there anything you would wish to say to us or to God before you hear it?”

  “Your Majesty,” his voice was more than a little hoarse, a far cry from the silky, unctuous instrument it once had been, “I don’t know why my enemies have told you such lies! I swear to you on my own immortal soul that I’m innocent—innocent!—of all the crimes charged against me! Yes, I corresponded with Earl Craggy Hill and others in Corisande, but never to conspire against you or His Majesty! These were men I’d known and worked with for years, Your Majesty. Men whose loyalty to you and His Majesty I knew was suspect. I sought only to discover their plans, to ferret out any plots they might be hatching in order to bring them to your attention!”

  He rose on his knees, extending both arms in a gesture of supplication and innocence.

  “You know what pressures have been brought to bear on all of us to renounce our oaths to you and to the Crown, Your Majesty. You know the Temple and the Temple Loyalists insist those oaths cannot bind us in the face of the Grand Vicar’s pronunciation of excommunication against you and His Majesty and interdict against the entire Empire. Yet I swear to you that I have observed every provision of my oath, given to His Majesty aboard ship off this very city when I swore fealty to your Crown of my own free will, in the face of no threat or coercion! Whatever others may or may not have done, I have stood firm in the Empire’s service!”

  He fell silent, staring at her imploringly, and she looked back with no expression at all. She let the silence linger once more, then spoke.

  “You speak eloquently of your loyalty to us and Emperor Cayleb,” she said then, coldly, “but the documents in your own hand which have come into our possession speak even more eloquently. The testimony of the Earl of Swayle further indicts you, and so do the recorded serial numbers of the weapons which were delivered here, in Zebediah, into your own possession … yet ended in a warehouse in Telitha. Weapons which would have been used to kill Soldiers and Marines in our service had the conspirators in Corisande succeeded in their aims. No witness you have called has been able to refute that evidence, nor have you. We are not inclined to believe your lies at this late date.”

  “Your Majesty, please!”

  He shook his head, beginning to sweat. Sharleyan was vaguely surprised it had taken this long for those beads of perspiration to appear, but then she realized Nahrmahn had been right. Even at this late date Symmyns hadn’t quite believed he wouldn’t be able to fast talk his way out yet again.

  “You were given every opportunity to demonstrate your loyalty to us and to Emperor Cayleb,” she said flatly. “You chose instead to demonstrate your disloyalty. We cannot control what passes through the minds and hearts of our subjects—no merely mortal monarch can hope to do that, nor would we even if it were within our power. But we can reward faithful service, and we can and must—and will—punish treachery and betrayal. Recall the words of your oath to His Majesty. To be our ‘true man, of heart, will, body, and sword.’ Those were the words of the oath you swore ‘without mental or moral reservation.’ Do you recall them?”

  He stared at her wordlessly, his lips bloodless.

  “No?” She gazed back at him, and then, finally, she smiled. It was a thin smile, keener than a dagger, and he flinched before it. “Then perhaps you remember what he swore to you in return, in his name and in our own. ‘We will extend protection against all enemies, loyalty for fealty, justice for justice, fidelity for fidelity, and punishment for oath-breaking. May God judge us and ours as He judges you and yours.’ You chose not to honor your oath to us, but we most assuredly will honor ours to you.”

  “Your Majesty, I have a wife! A daughter! Would you deprive her of a father?!”

  Despite herself, Sharleyan winced internally at that reminder of her own loss. But there was a difference this time, she told herself, and no sign of that wince was allowed to touch her expression.

  “We will grieve for your daughter,” she told him in a voice of iron. “Yet our grief will not stay the hand of justice.”

  He wrenched his gaze from hers, staring around the throne room as if seeking some voice which might speak in his defense or issue some plea for clemency even at this late date. There was none. The men and women most likely t
o have allied themselves with him were the ones least likely to risk their own skins on his behalf, and the last color drained out of his face as he saw the opaque eyes looking back at him.

  “The jury which has inquired into your guilt or innocence has found you guilty of each and every charge against you, Tohmys Symmyns, once Grand Duke of Zebediah.” Sharleyan Ahrmahk’s voice was chipped flint, and his eyes snapped back to her face like frightened rabbits. “You are stripped of your position and attainted for treason. Your wealth is forfeit to the Crown for your crimes, and your lands and your titles escheat to the Crown, to be kept or bestowed wherever the Crown, in its own good judgment, shall choose. And it is the sentence of the Crown that you be taken from this throne room to a place of execution and there beheaded and buried in the unconsecrated ground reserved for traitors. We will hear no plea for clemency. There will be no appeal from this decision. You will be permitted access to clergy of your choice so that you may confess your sins, if such is your desire, but it is our command that this sentence shall be executed before sundown of this very day, and may God have mercy upon your soul.”

  She stood, a slender dark-haired flame in white, slashed by that violet stole, rubies and sapphires glittering like pools of crimson and blue fire in her crown of state, gazing down at the white-faced, stricken man she had just condemned to death.

  And then she turned, Merlin Athrawes a silent presence at her back, and walked out of that throne room’s ringing silence without another word.

  .VIII.

  Monastery of Saint Zherneau, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis

  It was raining—gently, for a Tellesberg afternoon—as Father Paityr Wylsynn knelt in the kitchen garden of the Monastery of Saint Zherneau. He felt his plain, borrowed habit growing progressively heavier with moisture as the blowing mist washed over him, but he didn’t care. In fact, he treasured it. It wasn’t a cold, drenching rain, after all. More like a caress, possibly even a kiss from God’s world, he thought with a touch of whimsy as his muddy hands extracted weeds from neat rows of staked tomato vines and the warm, earthy, growing smell of wet leaves and rich, moist soil rose about him like the Archangel Sondheim’s incense.

  It had been too long since he’d done simple work, he thought. He’d been so wrapped up in his duties and his responsibilities—his probably arrogant belief that so many critical things depended upon him—that he’d forgotten even the greatest and holiest man imaginable (which he most decidedly was not) was only one more worker in a far greater Worker’s garden. If Saint Zherneau’s had done no more than remind him of that simple fact, he would still have owed Archbishop Maikel and Father Zhon enormous thanks.

  But that wasn’t all Saint Zherneau’s had done.

  He moved forward a few feet to reach a fresh batch of weeds and raised his face to the tiny, delicate fingertips of the rain. He had two more rows of tomatoes to do, and then the squash. That was going to be more of a penance, since if there was one vegetable he detested, it was squash.

  I suppose it’s proof of the Archangels’ workmanship that they created people to be different enough that there’s somebody to like every edible plant, he thought. I’m not too sure why they wasted the effort on squash, but I’m sure it was part of God’s plan. I’m not so sure a taste for brussels sprouts was, though, come to think of it.

  He smiled and raised a clod of wet earth in his fingers. He looked down at it and squeezed gently, compressing it into a smooth oval, and for the first time in far too long he felt another, far greater hand shaping his own life.

  * * *

  “Well, what do you think?” Father Zhon Byrkyt asked.

  He sat gazing out the window at the red-haired, youthful priest pulling weeds in the monastery’s garden. The young man seemed oblivious to the gently falling rain, although Byrkyt doubted that was the case. In fact, from how slowly and carefully Father Paityr was working, Byrkyt suspected he was actually enjoying it.

  “You know my opinion,” Father Ahbel Zhastrow said. “I was inclined in his favor before he ever arrived, and I’ve seen nothing to change that opinion.”

  Father Ahbel was the Abbot of Saint Zherneau’s, a title Byrkyt had held until fairly recently. Age was paring away Byrkyt’s strength, however. In fact, he was fading visibly, although he seemed less aware of the process—or less concerned by it, at any rate—than anyone else. He’d been forced to give up his duties as abbot because of failing health, but he retained the office of librarian, which was arguably of even greater importance and responsibility, given the … peculiarities of the Order of Saint Zherneau.

  “I’ve come to think highly of him myself,” Brother Bahrtalam Fauyair said. The almoner, in charge of feeding the poor in Saint Zherneau’s neighborhood, was brown-haired and brown-eyed, broad-shouldered and powerfully built, with a battered, pugilist’s face which hinted only too accurately of his youthful life as a waterfront loanshark’s enforcer before he heard God’s call. Now that face wore an anxious expression, and he shook his head slowly.

  “I’ve come to think very highly of him,” he continued, “but I can’t quite forget he’s an inquisitor. Everything I’ve ever heard of him, far less what we’ve seen while he’s been here, shouts that he’s nothing at all like Clyntahn or Rayno. But he’s still an inquisitor—raised and trained as a Schuelerite—and we’ve never admitted a Schuelerite to the inner circle. There was a reason for that, and I just can’t convince myself we should set that rule aside if we don’t absolutely have to.”

  “Bahrtalam has a point,” Brother Symyn Shaumahn said. As the monastery’s hosteler, charged with serving the needs of the homeless and seeing to the well-being and comfort of Saint Zherneau’s guests, he and Fauyair worked closely together every day. They didn’t look very much alike, though. Shaumahn was gray-haired, slender, and at least fifteen or twenty years older than Fauyair, with a thin face and a scholarly look.

  “He has a point,” he repeated. “Oh, there was never a hard and fast rule about Schuelerites, but there was certainly agreement!” He made a wry face, and Byrkyt chuckled. “All the same, Bahrtalam,” Shaumahn turned from the window to face Fauyair fully, “we’ve discarded a lot of other rules, including rules which were hard and fast, over the last couple of years. We haven’t set any of them aside without good reason, yet set them aside we have. I’ll agree that the mere thought of letting an inquisitor anywhere near the journal is enough to set my teeth on edge, but I’m inclined to support Zhon and Ahbel on this one.”

  “You are?” Fauyair looked surprised, and Shaumahn shrugged.

  “Not without someone showing me a very good reason to, I assure you! But I think Maikel’s almost certainly right about this young man. For that matter, I’ll remind all of us that Maikel’s judgment of someone’s character is usually frighteningly acute. Everything I’ve seen of Father Paityr only confirms what Maikel’s told us in his case, at any rate, and Maikel and the others are absolutely correct about the huge advantages inherent in bringing this particular inquisitor over to the truth.”

  “But those very advantages would become equally huge disasters if it turns out Maikel isn’t right in his case after all,” Sister Ahmai Bailahnd pointed out.

  If Sister Ahmai—more properly Mother Abbess Ahmai—was perturbed by the fact that she was the only woman present, it wasn’t apparent. For that matter, she’d been a frequent visitor at Saint Zherneau’s over the years. The Abbey of Saint Evehlain was Saint Zherneau’s sister abbey, although it had been founded almost two hundred years after Saint Zherneau’s. Sister Ahmai was a petite, slender woman with delicate hands, an oval face, brown hair, and a strong nose. She limped from a left leg which had been badly broken when she’d been younger, and damp weather (like today’s) made it worse. Her brown eyes were shadowed with more than the aching discomfort of her leg as she looked out the window with the others, however.

  “Trust me, Ahmai, we’re all painfully aware of that,” Brother Tairaince Bairzhair, Saint Zherneau’s treasurer, said
wryly. His brown hair was sprinkled with white, and he rubbed the scar on his forehead with one finger, brown eyes intent as he too watched the oblivious young priest working in the garden. “The fact that, unlike so many other intendants, he’s never been capricious, that he’s always been fair and compassionate, would be enough to give him a commanding stature all by itself.” Bairzhair snorted. “After all, we’re all so unaccustomed to that sort of behavior out of any Schuelerite, and especially out of an intendant!

  “But then there’s the fact that Schuelerite or no—inquisitor or no—I’ve never heard anyone accuse him of speaking a harsh word, and all of Old Charis has seen the faith that carried him through the silence about his family after his father’s death. Then add in the fact that the Wylsynn family’s always had a reputation for piety, and the fact that he’s now the son and nephew of two vicars who were martyred by that bastard Clyntahn, and you get a package that could do us all incredible damage if we tell him the truth and he doesn’t believe it.”

  “It could be even worse than that, Tairaince,” Fauyair pointed out. “What if he does believe the truth … and it destroys his faith in God completely?”

  All of them looked at one another silently, then Byrkyt nodded.

  “We’ve been lucky in that respect so far,” he said heavily, “but sooner or later, we’re going to be unlucky. We all know that. That’s the reason we’ve recommended against telling so many candidates we know are good and godly people, and we all know that, too. And whether any of us wants to talk about it or not, we also know what Cayleb and Sharleyan—and Merlin—will find themselves forced to do if it turns out we’ve told someone and it was a mistake.”