How Firm a Foundation

by David Weber

  They’d been stripped of even the ragged remnants of their uniforms before they’d been consigned to their cages under the bowels of the Citadel of Schueler. It wasn’t part of the original Temple complex, the Citadel; it had been built later, expressly for the Inquisition, and its walls were thick enough, its dungeons buried deep enough, that no one beyond its precincts could hear what happened within.

  And that was where they’d been thrown into their cells, naked, deprived of any last vestige of human dignity. Beaten, starved, tortured at seemingly random and totally unpredictable intervals. Perhaps the most horrible thing of all, Gwylym Manthyr thought, was that they’d learned to sleep right through the shrieks of their tortured fellows. It wasn’t that they’d become callous; it was that their bodies were so desperately starved for sleep … and that those shrieks had become a routine part of the only hellish world they had left.

  He looked down at his own hands in the dim lantern light. There were no nails on those scabbed, scarred fingers now, but he was luckier than some. Naiklos Vahlain—before his valiant heart finally failed him and he escaped—had been held down by two brawny inquisitors while a third had used an iron bar to methodically break every bone in his skilled, deft hands one joint at a time.

  He wanted to put it down to nothing but rabid, unthinking cruelty, yet he knew it was far worse than that. All of it had a purpose, and not simply to “punish the heretics.” It was designed not simply to break them, but to shatter them. To stretch their souls upon the rack, not just their bodies, until their faith in themselves, the courage of their convictions, whatever it was that let them defy Zhaspahr Clyntahn, shattered into a million fragments that sifted through their broken fingers to the floors of their cells. It was designed to turn them into shambling scarecrows who would mouth whatever lies were dictated to them when they were paraded before the faithful, if only they would finally be allowed to die.

  It was hard, he thought. Hard to maintain his faith, his trust in a God who could let something like this happen. Hard to sustain his belief in the importance of standing for what was just in defense of what he knew was true and his love for his homeland. All of that seemed far away, dream-like, from this unchanging, lantern-lit slice of hell. Not quite real, like something out of a fever delirium. Yet he clung to that faith and belief, that love, anyway, and their unlikely ally was hate. A bitter, burning, driving hate such as he’d never imagined he might feel. It filled his tortured, half-broken body with a savage determination which lifted him above himself. Which drove him onward, despite the sheer stupidity of surviving another single day, because it refused to let him stop.

  He heard iron-nailed boots clashing their way across the stone floor, and the sliding sound of someone’s feet trailing across it as the inquisitors hauled him along by his arms. He stepped closer to the front wall of his tiny cell, holding on to the bars despite the way the guards liked to hammer the prisoners’ fingers against the unyielding steel with their truncheons, and peered through them. He heard the soft moaning as the inquisitors drew closer, and he recognized the prisoner being dragged to face whatever fresh torture had been devised for him.

  “Hang on, Horys!” he called, his own voice hoarse and distorted. “Hang on, man!”

  The words were pointless, and he knew it, yet Captain Braishair managed to raise his head as he heard them. It wasn’t the meaning of the words that mattered; it was the fact of them. The evidence that even here there was still someone who cared, someone who knew Horys Braishair for who he was, not what the Inquisition was determined to make him.

  “Aye, Sir Gwylym,” Braishair half whispered. “I’ll do that thing, and—”

  He broke off with a strangled grunt, jerking spastically as the weighted truncheon slammed into his kidneys. The inquisitors didn’t even bother to explain why the blow had landed; to do that would have been to acknowledge that their prisoners had some remnant of humanity that deserved explanations.

  They dragged Braishair away, and a few moments later Manthyr heard fresh screams echo down the dungeon’s stone-walled gut. He leaned his forehead against the bars, pressing his eyes closed, feeling the tears on his cheeks, and he was no longer ashamed of that “unmanly” wetness, for it was so utterly unimportant against what truly mattered.

  The Inquisition wanted to break them all, but especially to break him, and he knew it. They wanted the Charisian admiral—Emperor Cayleb’s own flag captain at Rock Point, and Crag Hook, and Darcos Sound—to admit his heresy. To denounce his emperor as a worshipper of Shan-wei, a liar and blasphemer, and the Church of Charis as a foul, schismatic perversion of God’s true Church. They wanted that so badly they could taste it, and so they tortured his men even more cruelly than they tortured him. They ground his responsibility to them and his utter inability to do anything for them into his heart and soul and they expected that to break him in the end.

  But they’d miscalculated, he thought, opening his eyes once more, staring at the stone wall opposite his cell. Even the Inquisition could do that, and it had, because they weren’t going to break him. Not now, not next five-day, not next year—never. And the reason they weren’t was what they’d done to his men. Men who would have died no matter what Sir Gwylym Manthyr did or did not “confess to” before the watching crowd of spectators. Men he couldn’t have saved no matter what he’d done. Duty to his Emperor, faith in his God, loyalty to his Church—all of those things mattered, even here and even now. They were still part of him. But it was love and the hate—that molten, grinding hate which burned so much hotter for what they’d done to his men than for what they’d done to him—which would carry him to the bitter end. They could kill him, they could—and had, and would again—make him scream, but they could not—would not—break him.

  * * *

  “On your feet!” someone snarled, and a braided lash snaked between the bars to pop viciously against Manthyr’s chest.

  His head jerked up, and he shoved himself to his feet, the rough stone wall sliding against his spine as he leaned against it for support. He didn’t scream, didn’t even curse. He simply glared at the inquisitor beyond the bars. He didn’t know the man’s name; none of them had names, as far as he could tell. But this one wore an auxiliary bishop’s ruby ring and his purple habit was trimmed in green and ecclesiastic white.

  The bishop tucked his hands behind himself, considering the naked, scarred, burned, and welted man behind the bars.

  “You’re a stubborn bunch, aren’t you?” he asked finally. “Stupid, too.” He shook his head. “Surely you’ve realized by now that not even Shan-wei can save you from God’s cleansing fire. Maybe you’re so lost to God you refuse to turn back to Him even now, but why cling to the Mistress who’s betrayed you the way she betrays everyone? Confess your sins and at least you can be spared further Question!”

  Manthyr considered him for a moment, then spat. The spittle hit the bishop on the right cheek, and the man’s hand rose slowly to wipe it off. There was something ineffably evil about his self-control, the fact that his expression never even changed. It was a statement that the cruelty he inflicted would be carefully measured, not the result of blind fury that might slip and allow its victim to escape into death too soon.

  “That was foolish,” he said flatly. “Do you think you’re the only one who can pay for your stupidity?”

  “Go to hell,” Manthyr told him softly.

  “Oh, no, not me.” The inquisitor shook his head. “But you will, and by your example, you’re dragging others with you.”

  He turned his head and nodded to someone beyond Manthyr’s field of view, and two more Inquisitors dragged someone else down the passage. A third unlocked Manthyr’s cell, and they hurled the barely breathing body into his cell with him. He went to his knees, staring in horror at Lainsair Svairsmahn, and the Schuelerite bishop’s laugh was an icicle.

  “That boy is clinging to your example,” he said softly. “Look at what your bravado is costing him and see if it’s still worth it
.”

  He turned on his heel and stalked off, followed by the other Inquisitors, and Manthyr crouched over the body of his midshipman, staring at the seared and puckered wounds where the boy’s eyes had been. Svairsmahn was a brittle bundle of bones and skin, so broken and scarred it was almost impossible to believe he was still alive. But that thin chest continued to rise and fall, and Manthyr laid a gentle, shaking hand on his cheek.

  Svairsmahn flinched, one hand rising weakly in futile self-defense, but Manthyr gripped its wrist.

  “It’s me, Master Svairsmahn,” he said.

  “Sir Gwylym?” He could hardly hear the thready whisper and he bent closer, his ear inches from the midshipman’s mouth.

  “I’m here, Lainsair.”

  “I … tried, Sir. I tried.” Svairsmahn’s blind face turned towards him. “I tried, but … they made me. I … I told them. Told them … you worshipped … Shan-wei. I’m sorry … Sir. I tried. I tried.”

  “Shush, Lainsair.” Manthyr’s voice broke as he lifted that slight, maimed, broken body in his arms. He held the boy to his chest, cradling him as he might have a far younger child and urging his head down against his shoulder. “Shush. It’s all right.”

  “But … but I lied,” Svairsmahn whispered. “I lied … about you. About the Emperor. About … everybody … just so they’d stop.”

  “Don’t think about that now,” Manthyr said into his ear, feeling the fresh tears on his own cheeks. “You’re not alone. You think no one else’s told them what they wanted to hear? Look what they’ve done to you, Lainsair. Look what they’ve done. Of course you told them what they wanted you to.”

  “Shouldn’t.” Svairsmahn tried to shake his head again against Manthyr’s shoulder. “Officers … don’t lie, Sir.”

  “I know. I know, Lainsair, but it’s all right.”

  Manthyr settled into a sitting position, Svairsmahn in his lap, and stared through the bars of his cell. The boy couldn’t survive much more, yet Manthyr knew why the bishop had left him here. Because they were going to come back, and they were going to torture this broken, dying boy again in front of him until he told them what they wanted to hear.

  But they’ve made a mistake, Lainsair, he thought. This time, they’ve made a mistake.

  He cradled the boy’s head between his half-crippled but still strong hands, thanking God with all his heart for their captors’ mistake, and leaned forward until his forehead touched the midshipman’s.

  “Listen to me, Lainsair,” he said. “This is important. Are you listening?”

  “Yes, Sir Gwylym,” Svairsmahn whispered.

  “You’ve never done less than your duty as a king’s officer, Master Svairsmahn,” Manthyr said firmly, his voice strong and calm despite the tears. “Not in all the time I’ve known you. What you may have said to them, what you may have told them because they tortured you, can’t change that. And it can’t change who you are, who you’ve always been, either. I’m proud of you, Lainsair. You’ve done well, and I’m proud of you. It’s been my highest honor to serve with you.”

  “Thank you, Sir.” He could scarcely hear the wisp of a voice, but the boy’s cracked lips moved in a ghost of a smile.

  “No, Lainsair.” Manthyr raised the midshipman’s head far enough to kiss the boy’s forehead and adjusted his grip with careful, loving firmness.

  “No, Lainsair; thank you,” he said, his voice soft … and his hands twisted sharply.

  .V.

  The Gulf of Jharas, Desnairian Empire

  “My respects to the Admiral, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk, and inform him that Admiral Shain has hoisted the signal.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir. Your respects to Admiral Yairley and Admiral Shain has hoisted the signal.”

  Aplyn-Ahrmahk was pleased by how calm his voice sounded, under the circumstances, and as he saluted and headed for the ladder, the old saying about things changing and yet remaining the same ran through his mind. He could remember hundreds of times Midshipman Aplyn-Ahrmahk had been sent below with messages for Captain Yairley, and here he was doing it again, except that this message was rather more important than most of those others. Well that, and the fact that Ensign Aplyn-Ahrmahk was taking the message to Admiral Yairley, and he’d been chosen not because he happened to be conveniently available but because he’d become Admiral Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s flag lieutenant.

  On the face of it, he was ridiculously junior for such a post. On the other hand, he’d served under Sir Dunkyn for the better part of four years now, and the Navy was as strapped for experienced officers as it was for seamen, especially in the wake of its current expansion. It was unlikely there was a lieutenant equally familiar with the admiral’s ways running around loose. And he had far more experience than his sixteen years (well, sixteen years in another couple of five-days) might have suggested. And, for that matter, he’d be a lieutenant on that birthday of his. So he supposed it all actually made sense, even though he’d discovered that even after Sir Dunkyn’s intensive tutelage, the social skills that normally went with his position were not precisely his strongest suit. Well, he’d just have to make up for it by working on them still harder.

  He reached the paneled door to Admiral Yairley’s day cabin. It was, in fact, the same cabin which had belonged to Captain Yairley, since Destiny was not, unfortunately, one of the later and larger galleons which had been built with separate flag quarters.

  Another example of things staying the same, he thought, nodding to the Marine sentry and then rapping sharply. For a moment he thought his knock hadn’t been heard, but then a voice answered.

  “Enter!”

  Aplyn-Ahrmahk took off his hat, tucked it even more carefully than usual under his left arm, and ran straightening fingers through his tousled hair before he stepped through the door. Not that he was worried about the admiral’s reaction to his appearance. Oh no, not his.…

  Sylvyst Raigly, Sir Dunkyn’s valet and steward, had become awesomely aware of his employer’s exalted status the instant the brand-new admiral’s streamer had been broken from Destiny’s mizzen. Raigly was only about thirty years old, well read, and always well dressed and carefully groomed, but when he decided to feel waspish, he was capable of the most icily polite, formal, biting, exquisitely nasty set downs Aplyn-Ahrmahk had ever encountered. The ensign had never heard him utter a single overtly inappropriate or discourteous word … which didn’t prevent Raigly from vivisecting anyone unfortunate enough to rouse his ire. He was also a crack pistol shot and an excellent swordsman, and one of his shipboard duties had been to instruct the midshipmen in sword work. He’d done a great deal to improve Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s combat skills, and the two of them were friends … which wouldn’t save Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s neck if he came into the admiral’s presence with his tunic unbuttoned or a hat on his head below decks.

  There was no sharp-eyed and ominous valet waiting for him this time, however; merely an admiral. Well, an admiral and his secretary, who was far less terrifying than any valet!

  “Yes, Hektor?” Yairley asked, looking up from the chart he’d been contemplating while he dictated a letter to Trumyn Lywshai, his newly appointed flag secretary.

  “Captain Lathyk’s compliments, Sir. Admiral Shain has hoisted the signal.”

  “I see.”

  Yairley glanced back at the chart once more, then straightened. He stepped to the skylight, looked up at the wind indicator, and nodded in satisfaction.

  “I suppose we should go on deck, then,” he said mildly, and looked at Lywshai. “We’ll finish that correspondence later, Trumyn.”

  “Of course, Sir Dunkyn.”

  Lywshai was ten years older than Raigly, although he and the valet got along well. But whereas Raigly was as Charisian-born and bred as a man came (and looked it), Lywshai’s hair was so dark a black it was almost blue and his eyes had a much more pronounced epicanthic fold. His father had been born in the Harchong Empire and sold to a Harchongian merchant captain by the local baron as a “cabin boy” when he was only s
even. Shaintai Lywshai seldom spoke about those years, although they’d left deep and painful scars, and not just of the body. But the captain who’d bought him had decided to dabble in piracy as a sideline and picked the wrong galleon as a prize. Which was how Shaintai had ended up in Tellesberg at the age of thirteen, adopted by the captain of the galleon his previous (deceased) owner had attempted to capture. And which also explained the ferocious loyalty of Shaintai’s son Trumyn and the entire extensive Lywshai family to Charis and the Charisian crown.

  “Do you want me to wait until you come back below?” Lywshai asked now. “Or should I start making the fair copies of your other letters for your signature?”

  “Go ahead and finish up the ones I’ve already dictated,” Yairley decided. “I don’t believe we’ll be able to get very much done on the rest of it until this little affair is over, though.”

  “Of course, Sir Dunkyn,” Lywshai said again, with a small half bow, and Yairley smiled at him. He hadn’t had very long to get to know the secretary, but he’d already decided High Admiral Rock Point’s glowing recommendation had been right on the mark. He watched Lywshai’s skillful fingers adroitly sorting through the correspondence, then raised his voice.

  “Sylvyst!”

  “Coming, Sir Dunkyn!” a tenor voice replied, and Raigly stepped out of the admiral’s sleeping cabin carrying Yairley’s uniform tunic over one arm and the admiral’s sword belt over the other.

  Yairley grimaced at sight of the sword belt, but he didn’t argue. He only slid his arms into the offered tunic, buttoned it, and then buckled the belt around his waist. Unlike many other officers, he carried no pistols, but Raigly made up for that. Technically, the valet was a civilian, not that his lack of official martial standing seemed to cause him any undue concern. Although he wore civilian clothing, he was armed with sword and dirk and no less than four double-barreled pistols, two in holsters and the second pair shoved through his belt.