Off Armageddon Reef

by David Weber

  "That's true enough, Rayjhis," Wave Thunder said. He began jogging his sheets of notes into a tidy sheaf. "And while I'm as suspicious as the next man," the baron continued, "so far, at least, Seijin Merlin's credentials seem to be standing up quite well. I had my suspicions about who was behind that assassination attempt on the Prince, but none of my people had picked up the connection between Lahang and his mercenaries. Now that it's been pointed out, though, I expect we'll be able to confirm it. It makes sense, anyway."

  "I know." Gray Harbor sighed. "I suppose it's just—"

  The first councillor grimaced, then looked at Merlin with an odd little half-smile.

  "You're certainly right about our needing every advantage we can get," he said in a more open tone. "Perhaps it's just that I've felt we were trying to stave off krakens with a bargepole for so long that I simply find it hard to believe this sort of help could just fall into our laps, as it were."

  "I can understand that." Merlin looked at him for several moments, then glanced back at Wave Thunder. "I can understand that," he repeated, "and because I do, I've hesitated to mention one more name to you."

  "You have?" Gray Harbor's eyes narrowed, and Wave Thunder frowned.

  "There's one more highly placed spy," Merlin said slowly. "Highly placed enough that I'd originally intended not to mention him at all until after you'd had the opportunity to evaluate the reliability of the other information I could provide."

  "Where? Who are you talking about?" Gray Harbor leaned forward, his voice once more edged with suspicion.

  "My Lord, if I tell you that, it will cause you great distress."

  "I'll be the best judge of that, Seijin Merlin," the earl said with the crisp, hard-edged authority of the kingdom's first councillor.

  "Very well, My Lord." Merlin bent his head in a small bow of acknowledgment, not in submission. "I'm afraid the Duke of Tirian is not the man you think he is."

  Gray Harbor sat back abruptly. For a moment, his expression was simply shocked. Then his face darkened angrily.

  "How dare you say such a thing?" he demanded harshly.

  "I dare a great many things, My Lord," Merlin said flatly, his own expression unyielding. "And I speak the truth. I told you it would distress you."

  "That much, at least, was the truth," Gray Harbor snapped. "I greatly doubt the rest of it was!"

  "Rayjhis," Wave Thunder began, but Gray Harbor cut him off with a sharp, abrupt wave of his hand, never taking his own furious eyes off of Merlin.

  "When the King told us to work with you, I doubt very much that he ever suspected for a moment that you would tell us his own cousin is a traitor," he grated.

  "I'm sure he didn't," Merlin agreed. "And I'm not surprised by your anger, My Lord. After all, you've known the Duke since he was a boy. Your daughter is married to him. And, of course, he stands fourth in the succession, and he's always been King Haarahld's staunch supporter, both in the Privy Council and in Parliament, as well. You've known me less than two hours. It would astonish me if you were prepared to take my unsupported word that a man you've known and trusted for so long is in fact a traitor. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the truth."

  "Truth?" Gray Harbor hissed. "Is that what this has been all about? Who sent you to discredit the Duke?!"

  "No one sent me anywhere except my own will," Merlin replied. "And I seek to discredit no one except those whose own actions have already discredited them."

  "Not one more lie! I won't—"

  "Rayjhis!" Wave Thunder looked unhappy, but the sharpness in his voice pulled Gray Harbor's eyes back to him. The first councillor glared, and Wave Thunder shook his head.

  "Rayjhis," he said again, his voice much closer to normal, "I think we need to listen to what he has to say."

  "What?" Gray Harbor stared at his fellow councillor in disbelief.

  "My own people have reported a few . . . irregularities where the Duke is concerned," Wave Thunder said uncomfortably.

  "What sort of 'irregularities'?" Gray Harbor demanded incredulously.

  "Most of them were small things," Wave Thunder admitted. "Company he kept, a few instances in which known Emerald agents slipped through our hands in Hairatha when we'd alerted the authorities to take them, trading ventures that proved unusually profitable for him and in which Emerald merchant interests were deeply involved. And the fact that he's been Lahang's best customer for wyverns, as far as we can tell."

  "Don't be ridiculous," Gray Harbor said coldly. "The Duke—my son-in-law, I remind you—is addicted to the hunt. His wyvern coop is the biggest, most expensive one in the entire Kingdom! Of course he's Lahang's 'best customer'! For God's sake, Bynzhamyn—we've known all along that Lahang's cover was chosen expressly to give him access to people just like Kahlvyn! If you're going to accuse him on that basis, you'll have to accuse half the nobles in Charis!"

  "Which is why I haven't accused him of anything yet," Wave Thunder said rather more sharply. "I said it was small things, and no one is going to accuse someone in the Duke's position of treason on the basis of such flimsy evidence. Not when he's so close to the Crown, and when he's so openly and strongly supported the King for so long. But that doesn't change the reports I've received, and it doesn't necessarily make Seijin Merlin a liar. Which"—the baron looked Gray Harbor straight in the eye—"is exactly what you're accusing him of being."

  "Hasn't he just accused the Duke of far worse?" Gray Harbor snapped back.

  "Yes, he has," Wave Thunder said, his voice even flatter than Merlin's had been. "And what if he's right?"

  "The very idea is preposterous!"

  "Which doesn't mean it can't be true," Wave Thunder said unflinchingly. "This is my area of responsibility, Rayjhis. I don't want Seijin Merlin to be right about the Duke, but it's my responsibility to consider the possibility that he might be. And it's your responsibility to let me do my job and find out."

  Gray Harbor glared at him for several taut seconds. Then he looked back at Merlin, and his dark eyes were bitter with fury.

  "Very well," he gritted. "Do your job, Bynzhamyn. And when you've proved there isn't a single word of truth in it, 'do your job' and investigate this man, too! As for me, I'm afraid I have other duties at the moment."

  He stood, jerked an angry bow at Wave Thunder, and stalked out of the chamber without even glancing in Merlin's direction again.

  IX

  Baron Wave Thunder's Office,

  Tellesberg

  "I'm afraid it looks as if there . . . may be something to it, My Lord."

  Bynzhamyn Raice leaned back in his chair, his expression unhappy. Sir Rhyzhard Seafarmer, his second-in-command, looked equally unhappy. Sir Rhyzhard had primary responsibility for Wave Thunder's counterintelligence operations (although that, too, was a term which had not yet been reinvented on Safehold). He was Wave Thunder's most trusted subordinate, both for his loyalty and his judgment, and he was also a very intelligent man. Wave Thunder hadn't told him the identity of the duke's accuser, but the baron felt confident Seafarmer had deduced his identity. Sir Rhyzhard, however, had half a lifetime of experience in not asking questions about things he wasn't supposed to know, and Wave Thunder trusted his discretion completely.

  At the moment, Seafarmer was also the man who'd just spent the last two days going back over every scrap of information they had on the Duke of Tirian. The duke had worked closely with Wave Thunder—and Seafarmer—on more than one occasion, given his rank and his duties. Tirian was inside many of the kingdom's critical strategies, privy to most of the king's secrets, both personal and political, and he'd been there literally for decades. Which, because Seafarmer was as experienced as he was intelligent, meant he understood precisely where this particular pocketful of worms could lead.

  "I don't like admitting that for several reasons," Seafarmer continued after a moment. "First, of course, because of how messy this could turn out to be, and for how much it's going to hurt His Majesty. But I'm almost equally unhappy about the fact that
without this new information—wherever it came from," he added dutifully—"we probably never would have realized there could be anything serious to look at in the first place."

  "Not too surprising, really, I suppose," Wave Thunder sighed. He pinched the bridge of his proud nose, balding scalp gleaming in the sunlight streaming in through the window behind him, and shook his head. "No one wants to be the first to point a finger at the Kingdom's second-ranking noble, Rhyzhard. And no one wants to believe someone who stands that high in the succession could be a traitor in the first place."

  "It's happened other places," Seafarmer pointed out grimly. "I should have borne in mind that it could happen here, as well, My Lord."

  "You should have, I should have." Wave Thunder waved his hand. "Neither of us did. And now that we have, I don't want us jumping to hasty conclusions of guilt because we feel like we ought to have been suspicious all along."

  "Point taken, My Lord."

  Seafarmer nodded, and Wave Thunder reached out to toy with a paperweight on his desk while he considered his subordinate's report.

  Wave Thunder himself was proof of how open the Kingdom of Charis' nobility was, compared with those of most other kingdoms of Safehold, and he—and King Haarahld—believed in using the best talent available, regardless of how blue (or not blue) that talent's blood might be. That policy had served them well over the years, but it had its drawbacks, too. And one of them was that, however open the Charisian aristocracy might be, commonly born men still hesitated to accuse great nobles of wrongdoing.

  Partly that was the result of innate respect, the belief that certain people simply had to be above suspicion. That, Wave Thunder felt sure, was the category to which Seafarmer (just as Wave Thunder himself) had assigned Kahlvyn Ahrmahk, the Duke of Tirian, in his own mind. After all, the present duke was the only living son of the king's only uncle. Although his father, Ahryn, had been Haarahld VI's younger brother, he was actually a few years older than Haarahld, since Ahryn, like Kahlvyn himself, had married late. He and Haarahld had been raised more like brothers than like cousins, and he was Cayleb's godfather, as well as his cousin.

  He was also Constable of Hairatha, the key fortress city on Tirian Island. Hairatha was arguably the second or third most important naval base of the entire kingdom, placed to dominate the northern half of Howell Bay, and its constable was traditionally considered the senior Charisian military officer after High Admiral Lock Island himself. Not only that, but Tirian was one of the senior leaders of the king's party in the House of Lords, an unwavering advocate of King Haarahld's policies, one of the king's most trusted diplomatic representatives, and the son-in-law of the kingdom's first councillor. Surely he, of all people, simply could not be a traitor!

  But, as Seafarmer had just pointed out, it had happened other places. Which was where the fact that so many of Wave Thunder's best investigators were common-born might well come into play. It was possible that someone who was nobly born himself might have been more willing to cherish suspicions about a fellow aristocrat. More to the point, however, he might have been more likely to risk voicing any suspicions he did cherish about such a powerful potential enemy. Even in Charis, a commoner who made an enemy among the high aristocracy was unlikely to prosper, and the same held true for his family.

  It was a potential blind spot Wave Thunder was going to have to pay more attention to in the future, because although he'd just cautioned Seafarmer against leaping to any conclusions, the baron himself felt a sinking surety of the duke's guilt. Merlin Athrawes had provided too much other information whose veracity could be tested. And so far, every single thing he'd told them—and which Wave Thunder's agents had been able to test—had proved accurate.

  It was always remotely possible that Gray Harbor's suspicion that it was all part of some elaborate, convoluted plot to damage the crown's faith in the duke was correct. The very factors which had placed Tirian "above suspicion" made him vitally important to the kingdom and its security. If, in fact, he was as loyal as everyone had always believed him to be, then discrediting him—possibly even driving him into rebellion as his only defense against false accusations—would be a tremendous coup for any of Charis' many enemies.

  But Wave Thunder didn't believe it for a moment. And had Gray Harbor been even a little less closely associated with Tirian, the baron suspected, the first councillor wouldn't have believed it, either.

  Unfortunately, the earl was that closely associated with the duke. And then there was the little matter of the fact that Tirian was also King Haarahld's first cousin, and that both the king and the crown prince held him in deep affection.

  "We have to move very cautiously here, Rhyzhard," the baron said finally. Seafarmer didn't reply, but his expression was one of such emphatic agreement that Wave Thunder's lips twitched. Clearly that was one of the more unnecessary warnings he'd ever issued.

  "Do you have any thoughts on how best to approach the problem?" he continued.

  "That depends upon the answer to a rather delicate question, My Lord."

  "I'm sure it does," Wave Thunder said dryly. "And, no, I don't think we want to tell the King about this until we're more confident there actually is something to tell him. He's going to be badly hurt, if there's any truth to it. And he's going to be angry, whatever happens, even if it all proves to be a false alarm. But if we tell him about this before we're sure, it's likely to . . . adversely affect our investigation's secrecy. His Majesty is one of the canniest men I know, but I'm not certain how well he'd be able to dissemble if he thought the Duke was a traitor."

  And, he chose not to add aloud, as long as we keep it just between ourselves, something I authorized without His Majesty's knowledge or approval, he'll have someone to throw to the krakens if it turns out the Duke is innocent after all.

  Wave Thunder didn't find contemplating that possibility especially cheering, but it came with his job. And if the duke was in fact innocent, his importance to the kingdom would make placating his possible fury at having been wrongly suspected a high priority for King Haarahld.

  "That limits the possibilities, My Lord," Seafarmer pointed out respectfully. He wasn't complaining—obviously, he'd followed the same chain of logic—but simply considering the practical implications. "The Duke's own guardsmen are very, very good, and they're intimately familiar with how we go about things. They ought to be—they've helped us do it, often enough! So if we try anything like sneaking one of our people inside his household, we're more likely to alert him to the fact that we're suspicious than we are to succeed."

  "And we can't get at his private correspondence, either," Wave Thunder agreed.

  The duke's public correspondence, associated with the offices he held by royal appointment, like his position as Constable of Hairatha, was another matter. That, the baron was confident, he could gain access to without undue difficulty. And he was quite confident it would do him absolutely no good after he'd done it. He'd do it anyway, of course, just in case, but he'd be astonished if anything were to come of it.

  "If we knew exactly what he's doing—assuming, of course, that he is doing something," Seafarmer qualified scrupulously, "—it would make things a lot easier. If we knew he was passing information, and suspected who he was passing it to, we could try planting false information on him and see how the other side reacted. But all I can really tell you is that he seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time with people we've determined are in Nahrmahn's pocket, one way or another. Like Baron Black Wyvern. And Lahang, of course. And"—Seafarmer's expression turned grimmer—"there's that little matter of those Emerald agents who seem to keep getting lost in Hairatha."

  Wave Thunder nodded, but he hadn't missed the way Seafarmer's eyes narrowed. Two of the suspected Emerald agents who'd somehow managed to elude apprehension in Hairatha had cut the throats of a pair of Seafarmer's most trusted investigators before making their escape. Investigators who'd come to Hairatha with what should have been perfect covers . . . and the duke's
knowledge of their identities and mission.

  In fact, the duke had been the only person in Hairatha who'd been informed of their presence, precisely because Nahrmahn's agents there had so persistently escaped arrest in the past. Seafarmer had double- and triple-checked to be certain of that, which meant the duke was also the only person in Hairatha who could have given their identities away. That didn't necessarily prove anything. The secret might have been compromised at the Tellesberg end when Seafarmer first sent them out, or one of the investigators might have been known to the other side from a previous case. Unlikelier things had happened in the past, and would again. And even if the duke was responsible for the information leakage, he might well have revealed it inadvertently. For that matter, Nahrmahn might have succeeded in getting a spy inside the duke's official household, in a position to compromise the information without his knowledge.

  The problem was finding out whether or not that was what had happened. And until Wave Thunder managed to do that, he couldn't really afford to act on any of the rest of Merlin's information. Certainly not on any of that information he couldn't independently confirm.