Off Armageddon Reef

by David Weber

  "It's obvious Gray Harbor must have gotten something out of Tirian before the Duke was killed. And more than just confirmation of his involvement in the assassination attempt, I suspect. Lahang was either killed or arrested that very same night. No one's certain which; he simply disappeared. My own belief is that he was taken and interrogated, probably quite . . . rigorously in light of the attempt to kill Cayleb."

  "And you believe this because?"

  "Because of the way Wave Thunder and his agents have devastated Nahrmahn's network in Charis since his disappearance, My Prince. Dozens of his senior people have been arrested, including several prominent Charisian merchants and more than a few members of the nobility. Some of them had already been executed before I left Tellesberg, and there were scores of additional arrests. You know Haarahld's reputation, and Wave Thunder's. They seldom arrest anyone unless they're completely confident of their evidence. These arrests—and, especially, the executions—would seem to me a clear indication that somebody in Nahrmahn's employ who knew all the important details about his network talked. The only two candidates I can see would be Tirian, who I doubt had time to reveal that much detailed information before he was killed, or Lahang himself."

  "And you believe whoever it was who talked also knew about your own activities?" Hektor asked.

  "It's the only explanation I've been able to think of, My Prince," Mhulvayn said frankly. "So far as I'm aware, they have no suspicion at all of Zhaspahr. And, also so far as I'm aware, although they've issued warrants for my own arrest, they haven't arrested any of the sources and contacts I've cultivated. I suppose it's possible they're leaving those contacts alone, waiting to see who replaces me, but I believe it's more likely that someone in Nahrmahn's organization who'd become aware of my activities mentioned my name under interrogation. Wave Thunder knows enough to suspect me; I doubt he knows about the rest of our organization in Charis, or he would have moved against more of our agents, not me alone."

  "I see." Hektor leaned further back in his chair, his expression thoughtful. He sat that way for at least three full minutes, then nodded.

  "It may be you're correct in your assumptions," he said at last. "It's also possible, of course, that you aren't. However, there's no need to act hastily."

  He picked up a small, silver bell and shook it. Its voice was clear and sweet, and the chamber door opened almost instantly.

  "Yes, My Prince?" a captain in the uniform of Hektor's personal guard said.

  "Escort this man back to his quarters, Captain," the prince said. "See to it that he's treated well and with respect, and that any of his reasonable needs and desires are met. Is that understood?"

  "It is, My Prince."

  "Good." Hektor looked back at Mhulvayn. "At the moment, I'm very much inclined to believe that whatever happened wasn't your fault, and that your service there was as loyal and efficient as it's always proved in the past. Until I can be certain of that, however, precautions must be taken."

  "Of course, My Prince."

  "Good," Hektor said again, and made a small waving gesture with his right hand. The Guard captain bowed respectfully to Mhulvayn, holding the door open for him, and Mhulvayn stepped out of the chamber into the hall beyond with a cautious sense of optimism.

  * * *

  "What do you think?" Prince Hektor asked, glancing at Earl Coris as the door closed behind Mhulvayn and the Guard captain.

  "I think we don't have any independent information to confirm a single thing he's said, Sire," Coris replied after a moment.

  "So you think he's lying?"

  "I didn't say that, Sire," the earl said with a calm self-confidence rather at odds with the attitude he normally projected in Hektor's presence when anyone else was present. "What I said is that we don't have any independent corroboration, and we don't. It's certainly possible he is lying—the notion that his organization was broken through some sort of fluke circumstance beyond anyone's control would be one way to cover his ass, after all—but I don't know that he is. I'm simply not prepared to automatically assume he isn't. And even if he is, it doesn't necessarily follow that his analysis of what happened is correct."

  "I think," Hektor said after a long, thoughtful moment, "that I believe him. We didn't pick fools to send to Tellesberg, and only a fool would spin a tale like that, knowing that sooner or later we'd find out he'd lied to us. And I suspect his theory about what happened is also substantially accurate."

  The prince pushed back his chair, stood, and crossed to the chamber window. It was a wide window, set into a thick wall of heat-shedding stone, and it was also open to any breath of breeze, for Corisande's capital of Manchyr was closer to the equator even then Tellesberg, and the midday sun was hot and high overhead. He leaned on the sill, gazing out over the brilliant tropical flowers of his palace gardens, listening to the occasional twitter of birdsong from the flocks of songbirds maintained in the palace aviary.

  "Nahrmahn is a fool," he said quietly, with a dispassion which might have fooled most people, but did not fool Phylyp Ahzgood. "Langhorne knows Tohmas is no genius, but he knows better than to cross me, and he's not a total idiot, either. Nahrmahn, on the other hand, can give a very convincing imitation of one. We've always known that. But one works with the tools one has, and, to be honest, I'm afraid, I never realized just how big a fool he is."

  "We already knew his people were involved in the assassination attempt, Sire," Coris pointed out, and Hektor nodded, never looking away from the gardens beyond the window.

  "Agreed. But to have involved himself with Tirian was incredibly stupid. Eventually, one of them would have had to turn on the other, and to let himself be talked into attempting to assassinate Cayleb—!"

  The prince turned back to face Coris at last, shaking his head, his square jaw tight with anger.

  "If the attempt had succeeded, it would only have meant Tirian would betray him even sooner. Surely even he should have recognized that!"

  "I agree Nahrmahn isn't especially bright, Sire. At the same time, he has displayed a certain ruthlessness about disposing of tools which become liabilities. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that he'd placed someone with a knife close to Tirian as an insurance policy."

  "You're probably right." Hektor sounded as if he were conceding the possibility considerably against his will, but then he shrugged and shook his head angrily.

  "Even assuming you are, however, any insurance policy he had obviously failed, didn't it? And it would appear from what Mhulvayn has to say that Haarahld is reacting very much as I would have anticipated. This idiot attempt must have cost Nahrmahn the better part of ten years of building up his own network in Charis! Not to mention the effect it's having on our own efforts! And I'm afraid the possibility Mhulvayn raised—that they do know the identities of at least some of his agents and Wave Thunder is simply choosing to leave them in position and watch them now that their master's had to flee for his life—also has to be very seriously considered."

  He glanced back out the window again for a moment, then walked back across to his chair and sat down once more.

  "And," he continued more grimly, "if Haarahld chooses to view this direct attack on the monarchy as an act of war, he may not stop with Nahrmahn's spies."

  "Do you really think that's likely, Sire?"

  "I don't know." Hektor drummed the fingers of one hand on the table. "Everyone knows how he dotes on Cayleb and his other children. Obviously, from what he's already done, he doesn't take this little affair lightly. And if he's got sufficient solid evidence, and if he chooses to treat this as an act of war, Nahrmahn may suddenly find the Charisian Navy sailing into Eraystor Bay. At which point we'll have to decide whether to support the idiot—which, by the way, will also associate us with the assassination attempt itself, at least after the fact—or else see a major component of our master plan go out from under us."

  Coris considered the prince's words thoughtfully, eyes hooded.

  "I think, Sire," he said finally, "
that if Haarahld were likely to take direct military action, he'd already have taken it. Charis has gnough galleys in permanent commission to annihilate Nahrmahn's entire fleet in an afternoon, without our support, and Haarahld wouldn't give him the time to even try to activate his alliances with us."

  "Maybe he would, and maybe he wouldn't," Hektor said. "Haarahld has to be a bit cautious himself, you know. He's not particularly popular in Zion or the Temple, and he knows it. Besides, everyone knows Nahrmahn—and I, of course—backed Mahntayl against Breygart in Hanth. There are those in the Temple, like Clyntahn and the rest of the Group of Four, who might choose to interpret any action he takes against Nahrmahn as retribution for that. So he's unlikely to launch any quick attacks without first establishing with very convincing evidence that he's completely justified."

  Coris nodded.

  "You may very well be right about that, Sire. If so, how do we proceed?"

  "We protest our innocence, if he tries to associate us with Nahrmahn's attack." Hektor smiled thinly. "And we'll actually be telling the truth for a change. That should be a novel experience. And I think we ought to invite several of the more important of our other nobles to a personal meeting . . . without mentioning it to Nahrmahn. I need to be certain they understand what we're doing—or as much of it as they need to know about, at any rate. And I want Tohmas here, where I can look him in the eye."

  "Sire?" Coris' eyebrows arched. "Do you think Tohmas is thinking about climbing into bed with Nahrmahn?"

  "No," Hektor said slowly. "Not that. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if Nahrmahn isn't trying to convince him to. It would be like Nahrmahn to try to weaken my authority here in the League in order to increase his own bargaining strength. I don't think Tohmas is stupid enough to fall for it, but I need to be sure."

  "And if Nahrmahn learns the two of you have met separately, Sire? And that he wasn't invited to send a representative to any of your meetings?"

  "It might not be a bad thing if he did." Hektor smiled coldly, his eyes bleak. "First, Tohmas is one of the highest-ranked nobles in the League, and Emerald isn't even a League member. Nahrmahn has no right to a seat at our table unless we invite him to join us. And, second, it would please me to make the fool sweat a little. Besides," Hektor snorted, "given his part in the assassination plot, he can hardly hope to switch sides and betray us to Haarahld even if we do hurt his feelings, now can he?"

  "I suppose not," Coris conceded with a thin smile of his own.

  "In the meantime, we should probably decide what steps we can take to ratchet up the pressure on Charis while Haarahld's still distracted by his concentration on Emerald. And, of course," the prince added a touch bitterly, "to keep ourselves occupied while we recover from the damage Nahrmahn's little fiasco's done to our own organization in Tellesberg."

  "What sort of steps did you have in mind, Sire?"

  "I don't know that we have all that many opportunities for direct action," Hektor admitted, "and even if we did, I might avoid them for now. After all, it was Nahrmahn's notion of 'direct action' that created this mess in the first place! But it occurs to me that one thing we definitely ought to do is immediately step up our efforts to influence the Council of Vicars."

  "Risky, Sire," Coris observed. Hektor's eyes flashed, but he took the earl's caution far more calmly than most of his courtiers would have expected.

  "I know it is," he agreed after a second or two. "But, I think, riskier for Haarahld than for us. He's got that damned College of his hanging around his neck. With a little luck, we may be able to convince the Group of Four to turn it into an executioner's halter."

  Coris nodded, but the gesture expressed more acceptance than agreement, and Hektor knew why. Corisande was even farther from the Temple than Charis, and the same automatic suspicion that attached to Charis in the Church's eyes also attached to Corisande. But Hektor had been very careful to do absolutely nothing to encourage that suspicion, whereas Haarahld's support for his father's "Royal College," and for the social policies his great-grandfather had set in motion, did the reverse. And Hektor and Nahrmahn between them had spread a great deal more gold around a great many more hands in the Temple than Haarahld had. Still, Coris had always been rather more ambivalent than his prince about playing the Temple card.

  "What do you make of this 'Merlin' of Mhulvayn's, Sire?" the earl asked, and Hektor smiled thinly at the tactful change of subject.

  "At the moment, not very much," he said. "I don't doubt the fellow really is good with a sword, but it seems fairly evident from what happened to Nahrmahn's organization in Charis that it wouldn't have taken a genius—or a 'seijin,' assuming they actually exist, outside the old fables—to penetrate it. It sounds like he stumbled over something that gave away the attempt on Cayleb, and he's probably been riding it for all it's worth ever since."

  "An adventurer, then, you think, Sire?"

  "I think that's the most likely explanation," Hektor agreed. "At the same time," he went on a bit grudgingly, "Haarahld, unlike Nahrmahn, is no fool. Given the fact that the man clearly saved, or helped save, his son's life, I'd expect a man like Haarahld to treat the fellow as an honored guest. Probably find him some fairly comfortable slot at court for the rest of his life, for that matter, which is what this 'personal guardsman' business sounds like. But if this Merlin steps into the inner circle of Haarahld's advisers, then I'll be tempted to believe there's more to him than just an adventurer."

  "Should we take steps to . . . remove him, Sire?"

  "After the way Nahrmahn bungled the attempt on Cayleb?" Hektor shook his head with a hard, sharp crack of laughter. "The last thing we need is to get our people—assuming we still have any people in Tellesberg by this time, of course—involved in a second assassination! If it worked, Haarahld would probably suspect Nahrmahn, but we've just had rather convincing evidence that assassinations don't always work out as planned, haven't we?"

  "I suppose we have, at that, Sire," Coris conceded with another thin smile.

  "No," Hektor said. "I think we'll wait a while before we decide to have the good seijin eliminated. Unless he begins to make himself a significant threat, there are far better targets for us to expend our effort upon."

  II

  The Schooner Dawn,

  Off Helen Island

  "Well, Captain Rowyn? What do you think now?"

  Merlin had to shout to make himself heard over the rushing sound of wind and water. Seagulls and sea wyverns swirled in raucous clouds of white feathers and glistening, many-hued hide under the brilliant springtime sun. They dipped and dove about the fifty-foot twin-masted schooner Dawn as she drove through the brilliant blue water of South Howell Bay in explosions of scattered, rainbow-hewed spray and left a straight, white wake behind her.

  Dawn was the first schooner ever seen on Safehold. Sir Dustyn Olyvyr was the official designer of the rig, and officially Merlin was simply a passenger aboard her. But Horahs Rowyn, the skipper of Olyvyr's personal yacht, the Ahnyet, was one of the small but steadily growing handful of people who'd had to be told at least part of the truth about the sudden flood of new innovations. Rowyn knew who'd really come up with the converted coaster's new sail plan, and despite his faith in his patron, he'd been openly skeptical about Merlin's claims.

  That was obviously changing.

  The captain—a stocky, balding man with a fringe of gray hair around a bare, sun-bronzed scalp and a spectacularly weathered face—stood on the schooner's short, cramped quarterdeck staring in something very like disbelief at the masthead pendant which showed the wind's direction.

  Dawn was sailing close-hauled on the port tack. In itself, that was nothing particularly unique, but as she leaned stiffly to starboard under the press of her brand-new, snowy-white canvas, she was doing it better than anyone else had ever dreamed of.

  Even the best square-rigged sail plans yet devised on Safehold were little more weatherly than Columbus' ships had been in 1492, and their version of "close-hauled" was quite differe
nt from Dawn's. The galleons which plied Safehold's seas could steer no closer than within seventy degrees of directly into the wind, what Nimue Alban would have called little better than a close reach, under even ideal conditions. Indeed, a more realistic figure would have been closer to eighty degrees, and most Safeholdian sailing masters would have settled for that without complaint.

  But Dawn was sailing within just under fifty degrees of the true wind. Even that was far from spectacular by the standards of the sailing yachts Nimue had known on Old Earth's salt water, but Dawn had been converted from a typical Howell Bay coaster. She was relatively shoal-hulled and broad-beamed, without the fin keel or centerboard of one of those yachts. Merlin and Sir Dustyn had added leeboards to give her better hydrodynamics, but it was an awkward, makeshift fix, and the schooner rig itself was inherently less weatherly than the sloops or yawls Nimue had once sailed for recreation.