How firm a foundation s-5

by David Weber

  “Grandmother,” he looked at her affectionately, “I enormously admire Madam Pahrsahn. I also think she’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met, and bearing in mind my paternal grandmother’s youthful beauty that’s a pretty high bar for anyone to pass. Even more important, I’ve never met anyone more brilliant and cultured than she is. But she’s also somewhere around twice my age, and I think she regards me more in the light of a puppy who hasn’t yet grown into his ears and feet than anything remotely like a paramour. I promise I’m on my very best behavior at her soirees.”

  “Of course you are. I know that,” she said, just that bit too quickly, and he laughed and shook a finger under her nose.

  “Oh, no, you don’t know it!” he scolded. “What a fibber! You’re worried your darling grandson is going to be so enamored of the gorgeous, sophisticated older woman that he’s going to commit some indiscretion with her.” He shook his head, brown eyes glinting devilishly. “Trust me, Grandmother! When I commit youthful indiscretions, I’ll take great care to make certain you know nothing about them. That way you’ll be happy, and I’ll remain intact.”

  “You’re right, ‘rapscallion’ is definitely too polite a term for you, young man!”

  Her lips quivered as she fought to restrain a smile, and he laughed again.

  “Which is why you’re afraid of those youthful indiscretions of mine,” he observed. “A charming, unprincipled rogue and general, all-round ne’er-do-well is far more likely to succeed in being indiscreet, I imagine.”

  “That must be it,” she agreed. “But you are going to be out again this evening?” He looked a question at her, and she shrugged. “Your grandfather and I have invitations to the theater tonight-they’re presenting a new version of Yairdahn’s Flower Maiden -and I just wanted to know whether we should include you in the party.”

  “It’s tempting,” he said. “That’s always been my favorite of Yairdahn’s plays, but I think I’ll pass, if you and Grandfather won’t be offended. I don’t think it’s going to be up to the Royal Company’s production. Remember the last time we saw it at the Round? I doubt they’ll be able to match that here in Siddar City.”

  “Perhaps not.” She shrugged lightly. “It is an easy play to get wrong, I’ll admit,” she went on, deliberately not addressing his reference to the Round Theatre, the epicenter of the performing arts back home in Tellesberg. “And your grandfather and I won’t be at all offended by the thought that you prefer a younger, livelier set of companions for the evening. Go have a good time.”

  “I’m sure I will. And I promise-no indiscretions!”

  He gave her a wink, closed the guitar case, kissed her cheek, and headed off into the townhouse whistling.

  She watched him go with a smile, but the smile faded as his whistling did, and she looked back out across the bay with a far more pensive expression.

  Despite Aivah Pahrsahn’s indisputable beauty, Sahmantha Raimahn had never cherished the least fear Byrk might become amorously involved with her. For that matter, she wouldn’t have been terribly concerned if he had. Madam Pahrsahn was as cultured as she was lovely. If anyone would have known how to take a young lover’s ardor, treat it with gentleness, and send it on its way undamaged in the fullness of time, it would be she. And she was also wealthy enough for Sahmantha to be certain she couldn’t possibly cherish any designs upon the Raimahn family fortune. In fact, Sahmantha would actually have preferred for her grandson’s interest in her to have been far more… romantically focused than she feared it was.

  She hadn’t been entirely honest with Byrk about her husband’s probable reaction to his destination for the evening, either. Claitahn Raimahn hadn’t shaken the dust of Tellesberg from his feet lightly when he moved his entire household-and all of his business investments-from Charis to the Republic of Siddarmark. Claitahn was a Charisian to his toenails, but he was also a man who took his principles seriously and a devout son of Mother Church. When it came time to choose between heretical Crown and orthodox Church, principles and belief alike had driven the inevitable outcome.

  His stature among Charis’ mercantile elite, his wealth, and the fact that he’d sacrificed so much of that wealth in the process of moving it from Tellesberg to Siddar City’s Charisian Quarter gave him a standing second to none in the Charisian emigre community, yet he himself remained trapped between his two worlds. Despite his horror at the Church of Charis’ open break with the Grand Vicar, he remained too much a Charisian not to argue that the Kingdom had been grievously provoked. One sin couldn’t justify another in his view, but neither would he condemn Charis’ initial reaction to a totally unprovoked and unjustified onslaught. He’d fully supported King Haarahld’s decision to fight in self-defense; it was King Cayleb’s actions he could not condone.

  Not that he blamed Cayleb entirely. Haarahld’s premature death had brought Cayleb to the throne too early, in Claitahn’s view, and the new king had found himself in a desperately dangerous position. It had been his job to protect his people-no one could dispute that-and he’d been too young, too susceptible to the pressures of his advisers and councilors when it came to doing that job. The true culprits were Maikel Staynair and the Earl of Gray Harbor, who’d pushed Cayleb into supporting open schism instead of at least trying to make a respectful appeal to the Grand Vicar’s justice first. From there to the creation of the new, bastard “Empire of Charis” had been only a single, inevitable step, in Claitahn’s opinion, and he could not support it. But by the same token, he was quick and fierce to defend Charis, as opposed to the Church of Charis, when tempers flared.

  His and Sahmantha’s surviving children had accompanied them into voluntary exile, and he encouraged them to continue thinking of themselves as Charisians. Sahmantha lacked the heart to tell him, yet her own advice was quite different. In fact, she’d encouraged them to find homes outside the Charisian Quarter and do their very best to integrate into the Siddarmarkian community.

  She loved her homeland as much as Claitahn ever had, but unlike him, she was able to admit-and too self-honest to deny-that the Church of Charis wasn’t going away. Claitahn would never see his dreamed-of, longed-for peaceful reconciliation with the Temple. If the heretical church was brought down, it would fall only to the sword, and the carnage-and retribution-would destroy the kingdom he remembered so lovingly. The ashes would poison the ground and bear bitter fruit for generations to come, and she would not see her family poisoned in turn by clinging to an identity which was doomed. Better, far better, for them to recognize reality and become the Siddarmarkians into which fate and their faith in God had transformed them. She and Claitahn would die here in Siddar City, be buried in the Republic’s alien soil, still dreaming of the past they could never hope to reclaim, and she would never even hint to him that she’d realized that hope could never have been more than a dream.

  But not every Charisian living in the Republic shared that attitude. The fracture lines within the rapidly growing Charisian community here in Siddar City grew deeper-and uglier-with every passing day. Over a third of its members were here not because they’d fled Charis out of religious principle but because this was where trade and commerce had brought them long before the current warfare had erupted. The swelling influx of newcomers were as much Temple Loyalist as she and Claitahn could ever be, yet even a growing fraction of them were being attracted to the Reformist elements within the mainland Church, and nowhere were those Reformist elements stronger than here in the Republic. Many a Siddarmarkian-and even many of the Charisian emigrees who’d turned their backs in horror on the open schism of the Church of Charis-found the condemnations of clerics like Maikel Staynair resonating with their own disappointment in what the vicarate and the Church had become in the hands of men like Zahmsyn Trynair and Zhaspahr Clyntahn. Schism they would not condone; Reform they were prepared to respectfully demand.

  Sahmantha Raimahn was a shrewd, clear-eyed observer, determined to protect her family, and the shadows were growing darker,
even here in the Republic. Claitahn sensed it, too, and despite his own sympathy for much of the Reformist argument, he resolutely refused to embrace it. Neither would Sahmantha, for she’d seen only too clearly the horrors of which Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s Inquisition was capable. She recognized the danger hovering in the Reformist label, even here in the Republic, where the Inquisition’s writ ran less deeply, and that was the true reason she longed to pry her grandson gently away from Aivah Pahrsahn. She’d begun picking up whispers that the brilliant, witty, wealthy beauty who’d taken Siddar City’s society by storm looked with favor upon the Reformist movement. As always, Madam Pahrsahn spoke gently and calmly, championing peaceful reform, condemning violence, couching her murmured arguments in terms of love and compassion. No reasonable soul could possibly have accused her of the least impropriety… but these were not the times for reasonable souls.

  Be careful, Byrk, she thought after the grandson she’d raised. Oh, be careful, my love! You’re too much like your grandfather. You try to hide it, but beneath that surface you show the world, you feel too deeply and there’s too much integrity for times like these. Forget you’re a Charisian and remember to be cautious. Be Siddarmarkian, please!

  ***

  Thwap!

  Sailys Trahskhat stiffened as the well-rotted apple smacked him squarely between the shoulder blades and then oozed down his back in trickles of brown pulp and slime. His head whipped around, looking for the hand which had thrown it, but no guilty expression gave away the culprit. Indeed, no one seemed to be looking his way… which said a great deal.

  His fists clenched at his side, but he managed-somehow-to keep the fury he felt out of his expression. It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened. It wouldn’t be the last, either, he thought grimly. He was just lucky it had been an apple instead of a rock.

  And at least this time the bastard didn’t shout a nything, he thought. Fucking coward! Brave enough when he doesn’t have to actually face someone, isn’t he? Then he gave himself a mental shake. Just as well, too. If he had said anything, pointed himself out, I’d’ve had to do something about it, and Langhorne only knows where that would’ve ended!

  He bent back to his task, hoisting another bag of Emeraldian cocoa beans onto his shoulder and rejoining the line of longshoremen carrying them into the waiting warehouse. It didn’t pay all that much, but it was better than the soup kitchens, and he was lucky to have the work. Enough people didn’t, and in his calmer moments he realized that was part of the reason for the hostility he encountered every day. But still…

  “See who it was?” a voice asked quietly as he entered the warehouse’s dim cavern. He hefted his bag down on a pallet, then turned towards the speaker, and Franz Shumahn, his shift foreman, raised an eyebrow at him. Shumahn was Siddarmarkian, but he was also a decent man, and he looked concerned.

  “Nope.” Trahskhat shook his head and smiled, deliberately making light of it. “Just as well, I guess. Last thing we need is a riot down here on the docks just because some stupid bastard needed his head ripped off and shoved up his ass. Probably wouldn’t have done me any good with the Guard, either, now that I think about it.”

  “Probably putting it lightly,” Shumahn acknowledged with a chuckle. He seemed genuinely amused, but there was a note of warning in it, too, Trahskhat thought. Not that it was necessary.

  “As long as they stick to rotten fruit, it’s not going to cost anything but another washing day for Myrahm,” Trahskhat said as philosophically as he could. “If they start throwing rocks, like they did at the fish market last five-day, though, it’s going to get ugly, Franz.”

  “I know.” Shumahn looked worried. “I’ll have a word with the boss. See if we can’t get a little more security down here. A couple of big bruisers with cudgels’d probably cut down on this shit a lot.”

  Trahskhat nodded. It might. It might not, too. A lot would depend on whether the troublemakers thought the “big bruisers with the cudgels” were there to help Trahskhat or them.

  It’s not just about you, you know, he reminded himself. There’s other Charisians down here on the docks, too. And you’re lucky Shumahn’s thinking about getting someone down here to break the troublemakers’ heads instead of how much simpler it would be to just fire your ass!

  “I’m asking Horahs and Wyllym to keep an eye out for the rest of this shift,” Shumahn added. “Anybody else tries something, they’ll spot him. And if he works for us, his ass is history. The boss doesn’t like this kind of shit.”

  “Thanks,” Trahskhat said with quiet sincerity, and headed back for the next crate.

  The work was hard, often brutally so, and the job was a huge step down for a man who’d once been the Tellesberg Krakens’ starting first baseman. The pay was no more than two-thirds of what he’d have been making back in Tellesberg even for the same work, either. Worse yet, it cost more to live here in Siddar City than it ever had back home. His wife, Myrahm, actually made more than he did, but she was a skilled weaver. The Charisian community living in Siddarmark had always been heavily represented in the textile trade, and she’d been fortunate enough to find a job working for fellow Charisians. He was pretty sure her employers had embraced the Church of Charis, at least in private, but they were still good people, and he was glad Myrahm had found employment with them. He didn’t want to think about her having to face the kind of daily harassment he encountered down here on the docks.

  It wasn’t fair, but the Writ had never promised life would be fair, only that God and the Archangels would be just and compassionate at its end. That was enough for any man, when it came down to it. But it was hard. Hard when the rotten apples came flying from anonymous hands. Hard when he had to face his older son Mahrtyn and try to explain why so many people hated him simply for being Charisian. And especially hard when someone shouted “Heretic!” or “Blasphemer!” from the cover of darkness as they passed outside the tiny apartment which was all he and Myrahm could afford, even here in the Quarter.

  If they’d been heretics, they’d still be in Tellesberg, he thought grimly. Still with the neighbors they’d grown up with, not estranged from their own families. They’d come to Siddar City because they couldn’t be party to the schism, couldn’t stand by and watch while God’s own Church was torn apart. No, they didn’t like everything about the current situation in Zion. In fact, in the privacy of his own mind, Sailys regarded Zhaspahr Clyntahn as an abomination, an indelible stain on the sanctity of Mother Church. But the Writ and The Commentaries made it abundantly clear that the Church was greater than those who served her. Their sins could not diminish her authority, nor could they absolve her children from their obedience to her. They had the right to protest, to seek redress, when her servants fell short of their responsibilities. Indeed, they had a duty to insist her priesthood be worthy of their offices and the God they served. But that wasn’t the same thing as throwing defiance into the Grand Vicar’s own face! And it certainly wasn’t the same thing as setting up the judgment of a mere provincial archbishop as superior to that of the Archangels themselves!

  He felt the rage building in him again and forced himself to let go of it. It wasn’t his business to judge other men. It was his job to make sure he met his own responsibilities and didn’t help others avoid theirs. Those responsibilities included standing up for what he knew was right, and they included putting up with idiots who didn’t understand, as well. As long as he did what he knew was right, he could leave final judgments to Langhorne and God.

  He picked up another sack, settled it on his shoulder, and turned back towards the warehouse.

  ***

  Fucking heretic, Samyl Naigail thought bitterly. Should’ve thrown a damned rock. Hell, his lips drew back in an embittered snarl as he stood in the alley between the warehouses, glaring out at the busy scene, I should’ve thrown a fucking knife!

  Naigail was only seventeen, but he knew what was going on. He knew who was to blame. His father had been a sailmaker, and a good
one, but never a prosperous one. That was the fucking Charisians’ fault, too. Bad enough when everyone had “known” Charisians built the best ships in the world, whether they really did or not. The shipbuilders here in Siddar City had at least managed to keep their heads above water, and at least there’d been some work those days. But then the bastards had introduced their damned “schooner rig,” and things had gotten even worse. Everybody had to have one of the new damned ships, and if you didn’t know how the sails were cut, then you were just fucking out of luck as far as new orders went, weren’t you? Besides, who could match the quality of the canvas coming out of Charis these days? And who could afford to buy the quality of canvas coming out of Charis?

  Nobody, that was who! And as if that weren’t enough, then the goddamned heretics had to launch their fucking schism against Mother Church! Of course they’d driven the Grand Inquisitor into declaring an embargo against trade with them. What else had they expected? But they’d had an answer for that, too, hadn’t they? Them and their buddies the fat, sand maggot bankers. Hell, half of them were Charisians, too, weren’t they? And they got their sodomite friends in the Lord Protector’s government to go along with it.

  So now everyone was using Charisian ships, with Charisian crews, financed by Charisian money, and pretending they were Siddarmarkian. Everybody knew better, but did it matter?

  No, of course it didn’t! Whatever the registration papers might say, they were Charisian ships, and the Charisian privateers knew it. So they got safe passage while everyone else’s shipping got wiped off the face of the ocean. The shippers and the warehouses and the longshoremen were still doing just fine, them and their fucking Charisian friends. But the honest workers-the honest Temple Loyalist workers-who couldn’t find jobs as carpenters or sailmakers or chandlers or in the ropewalks, they were starving to death! Unless they wanted to go crawling to one of the soup kitchens, at least. But a man had his pride, and it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right for good, hardworking, believing Siddarmarkians to be thrown out of work and forced to accept charity just to survive.