How firm a foundation s-5

by David Weber

  She watched hope blossom on four faces, newborn and fragile, not yet able-or willing-to believe in itself.

  “We must punish those responsible for evil, and we must show to all the world that we will punish our enemies,” she said softly, “yet we must also prove- I must prove-that we are not the mindless slaves to vengeance who currently hold Mother Church in their grasp. Where we may exercise mercy, we will. Not because we are such a wonderful and saintly person, but because it is the right thing to do and because we realize that while we may destroy our foes with punishment, we can win friends and hearts only with mercy. It’s our belief that all four of you would make better friends and subjects than enemies, and we wish to find out if our belief is accurate. And so we commute your sentences. We grant you pardon for all those crimes of which you were convicted and bid all four of you go, return to your lives. Understand us: should any of you ever stand before us again, convicted of new crimes, there will be no mercy the second time.” Her brown eyes hardened briefly, but then the hardness passed. “Yet we do not think we will see you here again, and we will pray that the hurt and the fear and the anger which drove you to your actions will ease with the passage of time and God’s love.”

  ***

  Grahsmahn had been wrong, Paitryk Hainree decided. Empress Sharleyan was a beautiful woman, and not simply because of the magnificence of her clothing or the crown of state glittering on her head under the lamplight. Hate churned in his belly whenever he looked at her, yet he couldn’t deny the simple truth. And physical beauty, when it came down to it, was one of Shan-wei’s most deadly weapons. It was easy for a young and beautiful queen to inspire loyalty and devotion where some twisted crone whose physical envelope was as ugly as her soul would have found it far more difficult.

  She had a commanding presence, too. Despite her youthfulness, she was clearly the dominant figure in the huge ballroom, and not simply because every witness knew she was there to send those brought before her to the headsman. Hainree had learned more than a few of the orator’s and politician’s tricks building his resistance movement here in Manchyr, and he recognized someone who’d mastered those skills far more completely than he had.

  Especially now.

  Total silence had fallen as she told the foursome in front of her to simply go home. No one had expected it, and her knowledge of each of the four convicted men had startled everyone. She’d consulted no notes, needed no memorandums; she’d known what each of them had done and, even more, she’d known why he’d done it. Corisandians were unaccustomed to monarchs or nobles or clerics who looked that deeply into the lives of those brought before them for judgment. And then she’d pardoned them. Their guilt had been proven, the sentence had been passed… and she’d exercised an empress’ prerogative and pardoned them.

  Even Hainree, who recognized a cynical political maneuver when he saw one, sat stunned by the totally unanticipated turn of events. But the silence didn’t linger. He didn’t know who started it, but the single pair of clapping hands somewhere among the benches of witnesses was joined in a rippling, swelling torrent by more. Then more. Within seconds Princess Aleatha’s Ballroom was filled with the thunder of applause, and Paitryk Hainree made himself come to his own feet, sharing that applause even as he cringed inside when someone so deceived by Sharleyan’s ploy actually shouted “God save Your Majesty!”

  It took the guardsmen stationed throughout the ballroom several minutes to even begin restoring order, and Hainree took advantage of the confusion to change his position. Still clapping, obviously lost in his enthusiasm for Empress Sharleyan’s compassion and mercy, he stepped forward, shouldering his way through other applauding witnesses. He’d been seated three benches back; by the time the applause began to die away, he’d reached the front row.

  The thunder of clapping hands faded, not instantly and quickly but into smaller clusters that gradually slowed and then ceased, and Paitryk Hainree’s right hand slid into the formal tunic which had cost him every one of the hard-earned marks he’d managed to save up over the past six months. It was probably better than any the real Grahsmahn had owned, but it had been worth every mark he’d paid. Coupled with Grahsmahn’s summons to attend, his respectable garb had gotten him waved past the sentries stationed outside the ballroom. The sergeant who’d checked his summons had actually nodded respectfully to him, unaware of the way Hainree’s heart had hammered and his palms had sweated.

  Yet there was no sweat on those palms now, and he felt a great, swelling surge of elation. Of accomplishment. God had brought him to this time and this place for a reason, and Paitryk Hainree would not fail Him.

  ***

  Merlin Athrawes stood at Sharleyan’s back, watching the crowd. Owl had deployed sensor remotes at strategic points, as well, but even with the AI’s assistance there were too many people for Merlin to feel comfortable. There were simply too many bodies packed into the ballroom.

  I wish Edwyrd and I had argued harder against this entire idea, he thought as the clapping and cheers began to die away. Oh, it’s a masterstroke, no question! But this is a damned nightmare from a security perspective. Still, it looks like -

  ***

  “ Death to all heretics! ” Hainree shouted, and his hand came out of his tunic.

  ***

  Merlin might no longer be human, but he felt his heart freeze as the shrill shout cut through the fading cheers. Even a creature of mollycircs, with a reaction speed far greater than any flesh-and-blood human, could be paralyzed-however briefly-by shock. For the tiniest sliver of an instant, he could only stand there, his head snapping around, eyes searching for the person who’d shouted.

  He saw the bearded man standing in the front row, well dressed but obviously not an aristocrat. Then he saw the man’s right hand, and his own hand flashed towards the pistol at his side even as he leapt forward and his other hand reached for Sharleyan.

  But that instant of shock had held him just too long.

  ***

  The double-barreled pistol in Hainree’s hand had been made in Charis. He’d found that grimly appropriate when one of his original followers ambushed and murdered a Marine officer and brought him the weapon as a trophy.

  It had been surprisingly difficult to acquire any sort of accuracy with the thing, and he’d quickly used up all of the ammunition which had been captured with it. A silversmith had no problem preparing the mold he needed to cast his own bullets, however, and he’d practiced hard even before Sir Koryn Gahrvai had arrested Father Aidryan and broken Hainree’s own organization. He’d also sawed two inches off its barrel in order to make it more easily concealable and he’d devised a canvas scabbard to carry it under his left arm, hidden inside his generously cut tunic. There’d been times he’d wondered why he’d bothered, and why he’d kept a weapon which would automatically have convicted him of treason against the Regency Council if it had been found in his possession.

  Now, as the heel of his left hand cocked both locks in a single, practiced swipe, his right hand raised the weapon, and he squeezed the trigger.

  ***

  Flame flashed from the pistol’s priming pan and Merlin heard the distinctive “chuff-CRACK!” of a discharging flintlock in the instant before he reached Sharleyan.

  His own pistol fired in the same fragment of time. It all happened far too quickly, too chaotically, for even a PICA to sort out. The two shots sounded as one, the assassin’s second barrel discharged into the floor, Merlin’s fingertips touched Sharleyan’s shoulder… and he heard her sudden sharp grunt of anguish.

  ***

  Impossible.

  The single word had time to flash through Paitryk Hainree’s mind before the sapphire-eyed Imperial Guardsman’s bullet exploded through his right lung a quarter inch from his heart. No human being could move that quickly, react that quickly!

  Then the agony ripped him apart. He heard himself cry out, felt the pistol buck in his hand as the second barrel fired uselessly, felt himself going to his knees. He drop
ped the smoking weapon, both hands clawed at the brutal chest wound, he felt blood spraying from his mouth and nostrils in a choking, coppery tide, and a sudden terrible fear roared through him.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He’d come here knowing he was going to his death, succeed or fail, so what was wrong with him? Why should the actual approach of death terrify him this way? What had happened to his faith, his belief? And where was God’s comfort and courage when he needed Him most?

  There were no answers, only the questions, and he felt even them pouring out of him with his blood as he swayed and then toppled weakly from his knees.

  But I did it, he told himself, his cheek pressed into the floor in the hot pool of his own blood as the blackness came for him. I did it. I killed the bitch.

  And somehow, in that last bitter moment of awareness, it meant nothing at all. . IX.

  Sir Koryn Gahrvai’s Townhouse and Royal Palace, City of Manchyr

  “So what do you think of her now, Alyk?”

  Koryn Gahrvai sat back in his comfortable chair, listening to rain drum on the roof. The lanterns illuminating the garden at the heart of the square-built townhouse were barely visible through the pounding raindrops, and thunder rumbled intermittently, still somewhere to the south but rolling steadily closer.

  “I’d ask her to marry me, if she weren’t already married to an emperor,” Alyk Ahrthyr said. He reached out to the punch bowl on the table and stirred it gently with the silver ladle, then snorted. “And if she didn’t scare me to death!” he added.

  “Now why should she do a thing like that?” Gahrvai’s father asked sardonically. He sat at the head of the table, in the chair which would normally have been his son’s, nursing a glass of Chisholmian whiskey. “It’s not like she’s done anything extraordinary lately, now is it?”

  All five of the men sitting around that table looked at one another as a louder peal of thunder grumbled its way across the heavens. Lightning flickered, and Gahrvai raised his own glass in an acknowledging salute to his father before he looked at the Earl of Tartarian and Sir Charlz Doyal.

  “Did either of you see that coming?” he asked.

  “Which ‘that’ did you have in mind?” Tartarian inquired dryly. “Her performance, the assassination attempt, Seijin Merlin, or the fact that she survived?”

  “How about all the above?” Gahrvai retorted.

  “ I didn’t see any of it coming, at any rate,” Doyal admitted. “Just for starters, she certainly hadn’t discussed any pardons that I knew of.”

  He raised his eyebrows at Earl Anvil Rock and Earl Tartarian, but both of the older men shook their heads.

  “Not with us,” Anvil Rock said. “And I had a word with Archbishop Klairmant afterward, too. She hadn’t mentioned anything about it to him, either.”

  “I didn’t think she had,” Doyal said. “And something I find almost as interesting is that she didn’t ask anyone for a copy of their trial transcripts, either. Despite which she seemed to know more about all of them than we did.”

  “That might actually be the most easily explained part of it,” Tartarian observed. Doyal looked at him with an expression of polite incredulity, and the earl chuckled. “Don’t forget, it was Seijin Merlin’s agents here in Corisande that put us onto the plot in the first place, and we still don’t have any idea how they gathered some of the information they gave us.” He shrugged. “All we do know is that every bit of that information checked out when we investigated. I think it’s entirely possible they may have kept back some facts and suspicions they figured couldn’t be proven in a court, and I don’t imagine Merlin would have many reservations about sharing something like that with Empress Sharleyan.”

  “I suppose that could explain it,” Doyal said in a tone which implied he believed nothing of the sort, and Tartarian pointed an index finger at him.

  “Don’t you go shooting holes in my perfectly good theory unless you’ve got one to replace it with, young man,” he said severely. Doyal, who wasn’t that many years Tartarian’s junior, laughed, and Tartarian shook his head. But then his expression sobered. “And don’t go shooting holes in my theory until you’ve got an explanation that won’t scare the shit out of me when you come up with it, either.”

  “She really is more than a little frightening, isn’t she?” Gahrvai said into the small silence Tartarian’s last sentence had produced. Lightning flashed again overhead, close enough this time that the thunderclap seemed to rattle the opened garden windows in their frames.

  “I’m not sure frightening is exactly the right word,” his father objected, but Tartarian made a moderately rude noise in his throat.

  “It’ll do until we can come up with a better one, Rysel,” he said.

  “I think a lot of it was Archbishop Maikel’s fault,” Doyal put in. The others looked at him and he raised his right hand, palm uppermost as if he were releasing an invisible bird. “Remember how he reacted after that assassination attempt in Tellesberg Cathedral. According to the reports, he didn’t even hesitate-just went ahead and celebrated mass with the assassins’ blood and brains splashed all over his vestments. Frankly, I had my doubts about the stories at the time; now I’m starting to think it must be something in the water in Charis!”

  “You may be righter about that than you think you are, Charlz,” Gahrvai said ruefully. Doyal raised an eyebrow, and Gahrvai shrugged. “Don’t forget, before he celebrated mass, he also rebuked the members of his congregation who wanted to go out and start stringing up Temple Loyalists in revenge. Does that remind you of anything?”

  Doyal gazed at him for a moment, then nodded, and Gahrvai nodded back while his mind replayed the chaos and confusion of the assassination attempt.

  The only thing he’d been able to think when the would-be killer shouted was that Cayleb Ahrmahk would never forgive Corisande for allowing his wife to be murdered on her very throne. There’d been no way the man could miss, not from a range of no more than fifteen feet. Gahrvai would have been one of the first to admit that it was far harder to fire a pistol accurately than most people probably believed, especially when someone was gripped by the excitement and terror of a moment like that. Still, at that range? The man could almost have reached out and touched her with the pistol’s muzzle before he pulled the trigger!

  But his fears-like the assassin, apparently-had failed to reckon with Merlin Athrawes. Despite all the stories Gahrvai had heard, and despite the things he knew firsthand were true, he would never have believed any mortal man could move that quickly. The seijin clearly hadn’t seen anything coming before the assassin produced his weapon. Despite that, the first two shots had sounded as one, and his bullet had hit the man who’d been identified as Bahrynd Laybrahn (although Gahrvai sincerely doubted that had been his true name) before “Laybrahn” could fire his second shot. The smear of lead where Laybrahn’s second bullet smashed into the marble floor was barely two feet in front of where his body had fallen, and Spynsair Ahrnahld’s left shoulder had been grazed by the ricochet before it buried itself in the ceiling.

  Gahrvai had been in more than his fair share of chaotic, violent situations. He knew how impressions could blur, how a man could be absolutely positive of what he’d seen… and yet absolutely wrong about what had actually happened. And Merlin had reacted so quickly, moved with such speed once he did see the weapon, that he’d seemed almost to have been teleported by a wizard’s spell out of some children’s tale. But still, granting all of that, it simply didn’t seem possible Sharleyan could have been missed.

  Yet when Captain Athrawes rolled aside, coming up on one knee from where he’d covered her protectively with his own body, she’d been unhurt. Well, perhaps not totally unhurt, which certainly shouldn’t surprise anyone. Merlin had been more concerned with protecting her from assassins than gentleness, and the weight of an armored man his size coming down that hard would have been enough to knock the breath out of anyone.

  From Sharleyan’s expression and the tightne
ss of her shoulders when Merlin assisted her to her feet, Gahrvai had been certain for one heart-stopping moment that she had been hit. She’d leaned to her left, left hand pressed hard against her ribs, and her face had been pale and strained. But then she’d straightened, drawn an obviously cautious breath, and shaken her head-hard-at something Merlin must have said into her ear.

  Shouts and screams had still filled the huge chamber, and no one else had been close enough to hear what the seijin might have said, anyway, but Gahrvai had no doubt at all what Merlin had advised. Unfortunately, even seijins had their limits, and one of those limits, clearly, was Sharleyan Tayt Ahrmahk.

  “Be seated!” she’d shouted, and somehow she’d managed to pitch her voice so that it could be heard. Not by very many people at first, but those closest to her first stared at her in disbelief and then started repeating her command at the top of their lungs. In less than two minutes, by some sorcery Gahrvai didn’t come close to understanding, she’d actually managed to restore something like order as she stood almost straight, one hand still pressed to her side.

  Merlin Athrawes had stood beside her, his pistol still in his right hand, merciless sapphire eyes scanning the witness-filled benches, and Sergeant Seahamper had stood on her other side with an expression which could only be described as murderous. Gahrvai hadn’t blamed either of them at all. God only knew if there was another assassin out there. It didn’t seem possible, but then Gahrvai wouldn’t have believed the first one could have gotten in unchallenged. And if there was another assassin, the slender white-and-blue-clad figure who’d lost her crown and whose long hair had come tumbling down about her shoulders would be a perfect target.