At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.VIII.

HMS Gwylym Manthyr,

Howell Bay,

and

Tellesberg Palace,

City of Tellesberg,

Kingdom of Old Charis,

Charisian Empire.

The stupendous vessel swept across the dark blue water like one of Langhorne’s own rakurai. She was enormous, the biggest mobile structure ever built on Safehold: over four hundred and fifty feet between perpendiculars—four hundred and thirty feet long on the water line; twice the length of even a Zhenefyr Ahrmahk-class galleon or a Rottweiler-class ironclad—and seventy-eight feet across the beam. Her 10-inch guns—four of them, mounted in pairs fore and aft—were the heaviest ordnance ever sent to sea, and they were backed by no less than fourteen casemated 8-inch guns, with another twelve four-inch guns behind shields in deck mounts. She displaced over fourteen thousand tons at normal load, and the vast white furrow of her bow wave turned back on either side of her sharply raked prow as she sliced across Howell Bay at twenty knots … with at least another five knots in reserve.

The wind was out of the southwest, but it was little more than a light breeze, not enough to break the day’s heat or raise much in the way of a sea … and scarcely even a zephyr compared to the wind generated by her passage. The thick banner of black coal smoke pouring from her twin funnels hung heavy above the water, shredding only slowly. It lingered far behind her, like an airborne mirror of her broad, white wake, and Captain Halcom Bahrns stood on the open wing of her navigating bridge, both hands on the bridge rail in front of him, his uniform tunic pasted to his chest—the sleeves fluttering—as the wind of her passage swept back across him.

My God, he thought, she’s real. She’s really, really real! Deep inside, I never believed she was—not truly—even when I came aboard.

He’d been devastated when they told him to hand Delthak over to Pawal Blahdysnberg and return to Old Charis. Despite his deep initial doubts, he’d come to love every bolt, every plank, of his unlovely, ungainly command, and she’d never refused a single thing he’d asked of her. After everything he and his ship’s company had been through, it seemed bitterly unfair to be summoned home with no explanation at all. Zherald Cahnyrs, Delthak’s second officer, had been ordered home with him, and although the lieutenant was too disciplined and professional to say it, Bahrns knew he’d been just as disappointed.

But only until they reported to Admiral Rock Point—not at Tellesberg, or Lock Island, or even King’s Harbor, as they’d expected, but at Larek, at the mouth of the Delthak River—and found out why they’d been recalled.

He’d stood on the deck of HMS Destroyer, Rock Point’s flagship, staring at the enormous vessel moored at the fitting out dock, her decks and upper works aswarm with workmen, and he’d been unable to believe what he was seeing.

“Bit of a surprise, is it, Captain?” the one-legged high admiral had asked with a crooked smile.

“Oh, yes, My Lord,” Bahrns had replied fervently. “In so many ways! I never imagined I might be considered to command one of them! And even if I had—!”

He’d broken off, shaking his head, and Rock Point had snorted. The sound had been harsh, but it had also contained amusement. And possibly something almost like … satisfaction.

“After the Delthak Fire, I’m not surprised you’re surprised,” he’d said. “And hopefully Clyntahn, Maigwair—and Thirsk—will go right on thinking what you thought. We’ve certainly done our damnedest to help them do that, anyway!”

“I can understand why you’d do that, My Lord, but does that mean the fire was actually less destructive than the rumors said?”

“Unfortunately, no.” If there’d been any amusement in Rock Point’s voice a moment earlier, it had disappeared. “In fact, it was even worse than we first thought, especially given the need to continue producing the Army’s artillery. Frankly, little though anyone in Navy uniform would like to admit it—I know I sure as hell didn’t want to!—equipping the Army’s even more important than equipping us, at the moment. I imagine—” he’d given Bahrns a very sharp look “—you probably understand that better than most, Captain.”

“Yes, My Lord, I do.” Bahrns’ expression had tightened. “Earl Hanth’s been working miracles, but his people’re paying in blood for him to pull them off. Mind you, there’s not a man in this world who could do a better job than the Earl, and all of us know the price’d be even higher under anyone else. But I know those people, My Lord. They’re real to me, not just names in dispatches or newspaper articles. I’m in favor of anything that knocks that price down.”

“As it happens, Captain, so am I.” Rock Point had rested a hand on Bahrns’ shoulder. “And to be honest, the way you’ve coordinated with the Army so well—starting with the Canal Raid and continuing straight through the Seridahn Campaign—is one reason your name jumped the queue when we found ourselves looking for a skipper on short notice.”

Bahrns had felt his face heat, but, fortunately, the high admiral had continued before he had to try to come up with some sort of a response.

“At any rate,” he’d said more briskly, taking his hand from the captain’s shoulder and turning back to Destroyer’s rail, “between the damage to the Delthak Works and the need to provide the Army’s artillery, it’s going to be at least four more months before we’re able to complete the armament for the class. But by taking the two undamaged ten-inchers from the works and combining them with the proofing guns, we were able to put together the main battery for one King Haarahld-class—this one.” He jutted his chin at the enormous vessel. “Duke Delthak tells me she’ll be ready for trials in three five-days.”

“But surely a captain had already been assigned, My Lord? For that matter, captains must’ve been assigned to all of them. Wouldn’t it make more sense to give her to someone who’s been associated with the building program from the beginning?”

“Yes, we’d assigned captains. We didn’t exactly pick them at random, either, and we’d given this one to Zhorj Mahlrunee. I believe you know him?”

“Yes, My Lord, I do. Very well, in fact.” Bahrns had frowned. “He was first officer in Sea Shrike when I was a snotty. May I ask why he isn’t still assigned to her? He’s one of the finest officers I know!”

The concern in his voice had been obvious, and Rock Point had sighed

“I’m sorry, Captain—I thought you knew. Captain Mahlrunee was called home to Chisholm. It wasn’t an easy decision for him or for us, but his wife was killed in an accident.”

“Ahnalee is dead?” Bahrns had stared at the high armiral. Ahnalee Mahlrunee was the widow of a brother officer; she and Zhorj had been married for less than two years, and they had three young children, two of them hers by her previous marriage.

“I’m afraid so,” Rock Point had confirmed. “Just one of those stupid things. But you probably know he’d moved his parents to Chisholm after his marriage?”

The high admiral had cocked an eyebrow, and Bahrns nodded, Mahlrunee’s mother and father were quite elderly, and his only living sibling was also a Navy officer. Since both of them had been constantly at sea, Ahnahlee had insisted their parents move to Chisholm where she could care for them.

“He was devastated by the news,” Rock Point continued, “and his brother’s at sea in Baron Sarmouth’s squadron, so there was literally no one else to care for his family. Under the circumstances, he requested relief and went on inactive duty—with my complete support. Some duties take priority over anything else, and this is damned well one of them! But it left us with a bit of a personnel problem, and when I asked him to recommend his relief, he picked you. To be honest, we’d already ordered you home to give you one of the new City-class, so I wasn’t inclined to accept his recommendation at the time. It was only after you were in transit that Duke Delthak’s people completed their damage survey and determined we had the artillery to complete one King Haarahld, after all. Their Majesties picked this one, and that meant she needed a captain fast.”

Bahrns’ expression had shouted the question he’d been unable to ask, and Rock Point had chuckled sourly.

“As it happens, Captain, the ship’s construction was at least as advanced as any of the others’. The only one they might have picked instead was King Haarahld VII, and her boilers are … less than satisfactory, let’s say.” The high admiral had shrugged. “It doesn’t happen often with the Delthak Works, but even Duke Delthak’s people occasionally screw up. In fact, we’d already discovered we had to rip them out and start over again, and getting that done had dropped in priority when we didn’t think we’d have the guns for any of them. We hadn’t made much progress on that little chore when we found out we could complete one, so there really wasn’t another candidate. After all,” he’d showed Bahrns his teeth, “we don’t want anyone in the Gulf of Dohlar … misconstruing our message.”

“No, My Lord. I can see that,” Bahrns had said, his eyes on the name emblazoned in golden letters on the cliff-like side of the enormous ship’s bow.

“HMS Gwylym Manthyr” those letters had said.

* * *

“Well, Captain?”

The man standing at Halcom Bahrns’ side had to raise his voice over the sound of rushing wind and water, and Bahrns turned to him courteously.

“Should I assume she passes muster?” he continued with a slight smile, and there was nothing at all slight about Bahrns’ answering smile.

“Oh, I think you can assume that, Your Grace!” he told the recently ennobled Duke of Delthak. “Langhorne! I thought Delthak was incredible when you and High Admiral Rock Point gave her to me, but this—!”

He waved one arm in a wide arc, taking in the long, lethal barrels of her guns, the white water bursting away from either bow, the wind of her passage humming in the signal halyards, and the broad deck—vibrating to the throbbing pulse beat of her mighty engines, yet steady as a rock underfoot, despite her headlong charge across the bay—and shook his head.

“I can understand why the details were so closely held,” he continued, “but I never would’ve imagined what they really were. This ship—this single ship—is more powerful than every other warship in the entire world!”

“That might be a little bit of an exaggeration,” Ehdwyrd Howsmyn said judiciously. “And she’s not designed just to engage other navies, either. To be honest, I suspect that’s another reason Baron Rock Point thought you’d be the proper man to command her. I believe you’re intended to be what His Majesty calls ‘Earl Sharpfield’s Doorknocker’ when it’s time to … go calling on Gorath.”

“And I’m looking forward to the visit, Your Grace,” Bahrns said much more grimly.

“We all are,” Delthak assured him. “I knew Gwylym Manthyr.” He rested a hand on the bridge railing and looked out across the endless waters of the bay for a moment. “A lot of us have been waiting for his namesake’s voice to make itself heard. Do us proud, Captain.”

“We will, Your Grace.” Bahrns met his gaze levelly. “Depend on that—we will.”

* * *

“If I’d realized Master Tahnguchi would shave three full five-days off his own best estimate, I might’ve delayed our visit to Rhaigair until she arrived, Ehdwyrd,” Dunkyn Yairley said, studying the recorded satellite imagery of HMS Gwylym Manthyr’s final acceptance trials. “A lot of people who’re dead now might not’ve been if I had, too.”

“As I recall, Dunkyn,” Cayleb Ahrmahk put in from his Siddar City study, just a bit tartly, “Lewk Cohlmyn is our overall commander for the Gulf of Dohlar. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that mean he got to pick the timing?”

“Well, yes, Your Majesty. But I could have argued instead of getting behind and pushing. And if I’d known she’d be available, I damned well would have!”

“Dunkyn, it could’ve been argued either way even if you’d known exactly when Manthyr was going to commission,” Domynyk Staynair said. “Every day we’d delayed would’ve been one more day for the Dohlarans to get their damned ‘sea-bombs’ into production and deployed, and not even a King Haarahld has an armored bottom. Then there were Zhwaigair’s coast-defense rockets, and those frigging twelve-inch rifles Duchairn and Maigwair had earmarked for Golden Grass and Cahstnyr. The first of Zhwaigair’s rockets would’ve arrived yesterday morning, and the first twelve-inch battery was less than a five-day behind them, I believe?”

Sarmouth nodded, if perhaps a bit unwillingly, and Rock Point shrugged.

“The King Haarahlds aren’t magic. I think it’s unlikely any of that could have significantly damaged Manthyr, but I might be wrong—especially about the rockets. When we designed her deck armor, we weren’t thinking in terms of plunging fire from two-hundred-pound warheads, you know. If you’d waited, there’d’ve been time for all of those to get into play before you hit Rhaigair.”

“I think there’s a certain point to that argument,” Merlin put in. Sarmouth looked at the image projected onto his contact lenses, and Merlin shrugged. “Let’s not forget how beaten up Eraystor was by ten-inch guns by the time Zhaztro finished running the batteries.”

“All right,” Sarmouth said after a moment. “I’ll grant that. But I really, really wish I’d been able to send Manthyr in—alone, even—to deal with Rhaigair while Hainz and his squadron waited for Raisahndo’s galleons off Shipworm Shoal. Hell! Even somebody as stubborn as Raisahndo might’ve surrendered when he saw that waiting for him!”

Merlin chuckled bleakly and Cayleb snorted, although Sarmouth definitely had a point. The RDN’s Western Squadron had simply ceased to exist after the Battle of Shipworm Shoal; not a single ship heavier than a twenty-gun brig had escaped. But the Royal Dohlaran Navy had lived up to its own tradition. By the time Caitahno Raisahndo’s surviving galleons struck their colors, only eleven of them had still been in action. For that matter, only twenty-six of them—and only one of his crippled screw-galleys—had still been afloat.

His flagship had not been among them.

Yet they hadn’t died alone, those ships. If the Charisians had wanted to get into their range of him, they’d had to let him into his range of them, as well, and only three of their ships had been armored. The carnage wooden ships armed with shell-firing guns could wreak upon one another was incredible. Two Charisian galleons had simply blown up. Four more had foundered as the hungry sea poured into breached and shattered hulls, and another five had been too badly damaged to return to service. Sarmouth had burned one of them on the spot rather than attempt to nurse the broken, leaking wreck back to Claw Island. The other four had returned to Claw Keep to be stripped of their guns and useful fittings before they, too, were burned.

As recently as a year or two earlier, at least two of them probably would have been repaired, but there’d been no point now. With the Western Squadron’s destruction, the Imperial Charisian Navy’s only remaining opposition was the squadron under Thirsk’s personal command in Gorath. Even the Desnairian privateers had become only a ghost of their onetime menace. Sir Hainz Zhaztro’s message to Geyra had inspired Emperor Mahrys and his councilors to … reconsider their support for that strategy. Or for anything else which might conceivably inspire another visit from the ICN.

Zhaspahr Clyntahn had been livid when he learned that the Desnairians who’d already deserted the Jihad’s land war had quietly done the same at sea, as well. Fortunately for Mahrys, Desnair the City was out of the Grand Inquisitor’s reach, unless he wanted to risk the even worse possibility of ordering the emperor’s arrest and discovering the Inquisition couldn’t carry it out! Clearly, that was one more risk than even he was willing to run … at least until he’d dealt with Charis and her allies. After that, of course, he’d look at things differently, and all the world knew that Zhaspahr Clyntahn had a long, long memory.

That must leave Mahrys just a tad … ambivalent about the Jihad’s outcome, Merlin reflected with a certain nasty sense of pleasure.

But the upshot was that, after so many years of explosive expansion, the ICN had more ships—a lot more ships—than it actually needed. And thanks to the introduction of steam, steel hulls, and rifled artillery, virtually all those ships were at best obsolescent. There was little point repairing badly damaged galleons which would only be retired and broken up within the next two or three years.

“You know,” Nynian Rychtyr said from where she sat on the arm of Merlin’s chair, “I’ve been meaning to ask this for a while, but why in Kohdy’s name did you people decide to build something like the King Haarahlds?” She shook her head, her expression quizzical. “Oh, I understand you needed Cayleb’s ‘doorknocker,’ and I understand the Cities don’t have the operating range you’d really like to have. But they did just fine at Rhaigair, and Sir Dunkyn’s clearly demonstrated he and his Marines can seize islands for forward coaling stations anytime he feels like it. So why build something so big? And so fast, for that matter! Captain Bahrns’ had it up to twenty-six knots, and wasn’t even straining its machinery when he did.”

“Had her up to twenty-six knots, please,” Merlin said with a pained expression and shuddered delicately. “Her, Nynian! You really want to be careful about how you offend a Charisian’s sensibilities with that sort of loose language.”

“Sure I do.” She rolled her eyes and smacked him across the top of his head. “But my question stands. I’d never heard of ‘overkill’ until I fell into my present evil company, but to be honest, these ships strike me as a pretty clear example of exactly that. And you’ve diverted an awful lot of resources into them.”

“The resource cost is probably the strongest argument against them,” Earl Pine Hollow said before Merlin could reply. The imperial first councilor sat comfortably propped up in bed with an open book in his lap and his evening cup of chocolate on a bedside table. “On the other hand, you have to remember when they were first put into the pipeline, Nynian.” He shrugged. “We’d already begun work on them before Clyntahn’s ‘Sword of Schueler’ ever hit the Republic. At that point, the Navy was still our primary focus, since there was no way we were going to be able to invade the Mainland out of our own resources anytime soon. By the time the Army’s needs took center stage, we were already well launched on the program and, frankly, the Army didn’t need armor plate, steam engines, or most of the rest of what was going into the ships. So the resource diversion aspect of it actually isn’t nearly as clear-cut as it might appear.”

“All right, I’ll grant that,” Nynian conceded, but she rallied gamely. “On the other hand, you could’ve built—what? Ten Cities for each King Haarahld?”

“Yes, we could,” Sharleyan acknowledged from her own Tellesberg bedchamber. “And we considered doing just that. But I’m a little surprised, Nynian.”

“Surprised?”

“Yes. You, of all people, should be accustomed to long-term strategic thinking.”

Nynian’s eyebrows arched, and Sharleyan chuckled.

“It was your idea, Merlin. Why don’t you explain it?”

“All right.” Merlin leaned back in his chair and smiled up at Nynian. “Of course, there’s always the problem of getting such a land-bound ignoramus to understand the finer points so glaringly obvious to us subtle sea creatures.”

She glared down at him, raising one mock-ferocious fist, and he lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Sorry!” he told her while laughter sounded over the com channel. “I couldn’t resist. But,” his expression sobered, “Sharley’s put her finger on the real reason I backed Dustyn so strongly when he and Ehdwyrd first came up with the notion. I almost argued against it, really—for all the reasons you just cited. But then another aspect of their proposal occurred to me.”

“What sort of aspect?” she asked, lowering her fist, her own expression more serious as his tone registered.

“What’s our end strategy, Nynian?” he countered, and she frowned.

That was a question which the Inner Circle’s members had discussed often enough, both before and after she’d become a member of it, she reflected. And while parts of it were simplicity itself to answer, others were anything but.

Initially, Charis’ overriding objective had been simple survival, although Maikel Staynair’s quest for freedom of conscience had run a close second. Of course, Charis’ survival had required the Group of Four’s defeat, and as the jihad grew increasingly bitter and ever bloodier, that priority had broadened as all Charisians, aside from the dwindling number of diehard Temple Loyalists, had come to demand a complete separation from the Church of the Temple, coupled with the destruction of the Inquisition’s power. And that—hard though many Charisians, including a great many of the most ardent Reformists, had fought against accepting it—meant more than simply defending Charis against the immediate threat of invasion and conquest. It meant the Church itself had to be beaten into submission on the field of battle, because that was the only way a Zhaspahr Clyntahn could be forced to abandon that effort.

But those were the strategic imperatives all Charisians knew about—the same imperatives that operated for the Republic of Siddarmark, following Clyntahn’s brutal assault upon it. They were not Nimue Alban’s overriding imperative, and Nimue’s imperative—which had become that of the Inner Circle—was the outright destruction, not simply the defeat, of the Church of God Awaiting. It was her task, her mission—the burning purpose for which the original Nimue Alban had died—to overturn the Proscriptions, proclaim the truth about the ‘Archangels,’ liberate the human race from the anti-technology shackles Eric Langhorne had fastened upon it, and—above every other priority in the universe—prepare it to face the peril of the Gbaba once again.

“Ideally,” Nynian said finally, “the end game’s to compel the Group of Four—well, Group of Three now, I suppose—to surrender and give us possession of the Temple so we can get at whatever’s in the basement.” She grimaced. “Of course, as we’ve all agreed, the chance of pulling that off ranges between slim and none.”

“Exactly.” Merlin shrugged. “And even if they were willing to let us into that basement, it might not solve our problem. We realized even before Paityr brought us the Stone of Schueler that we couldn’t just waltz into the Temple and start shutting off power switches.” He smiled very thinly. “Leaving aside the probability that someone as paranoid as Chihiro and Schueler would’ve left safeguards to prevent anybody from deliberately—or accidentally—shutting anything down, we know that at least one ‘Archangel’ left at least one booby-trap down there. God only knows what somebody else may’ve left! And how would every believer in Zion react if all the Temple’s ‘divine’ environmental services, lighting, and repair-mech ‘servitors’ suddenly go down? Since ‘every believer in Zion’ happens to be the same thing as ‘every living human being in Zion,’ that’s a not-minor consideration.

“And would any vicarate, even one that somehow deposes Clyntahn and the others, be willing to let us ‘heretics’ profane the Temple, whatever happens? I suspect they’d balk at that. They might be reduced to offering passive resistance, but I could see the truly devout among them standing on the Temple steps to block our access unless we were willing to use physical force to move them, and the last thing we want to do is to physically invade the Temple. At the moment, we’re totally undermining Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s moral authority. Of course, he’s our best ally in that endeavor, but if we landed ‘heretical’ troops in Zion to violate the precincts of the Temple.…”

He shrugged again, much less nonchalantly, and his sapphire eyes were darker and deeper than the sea.

“I can’t think of a single thing more likely to provoke fanatical resistance. The kind of resistance where children with bombs strapped to their backs run straight into the machine guns and parents encourage them to do it. God knows we’ve seen enough of that sort of fanaticism, and not just on the Temple Loyalists’ side. Look at some of the things that happened in Glacierheart and Tarikah and Hildermoss.” He shook his head. “That’s the largest city on Safehold, Nynian. The body count could well be in the millions, even if we ‘won’ in the end … and that assumes the bombardment platform isn’t programmed to protect the physical integrity of the Temple by automatically taking out any attacking army or fleet, which I suspect it damned well is. Hell, I’m not a crazed, mass-murdering lunatic, and that’s how I’d’ve set it up!”

“But if we can’t invade Zion,” Cayleb said quietly, drawing Nynian’s gaze to him, “then the chance of our being able to … undo the Holy Writ just because we defeat the Group of Four goes from ‘unlikely as hell’ to completely impossible. When we started this—once the ‘Inner Circle’ really understood what was at stake, at least—we were willing to settle for driving the Church back, breaking the Inquisition’s kneecaps, and creating a situation in which the Church of Charis gradually destroyed the Church’s authority. We were thinking in terms of decades, even generations, of slowly undermining the Writ and the Proscriptions through example and gradual reinterpretation. And we were willing to take however long we needed to take to find a solution to the bombardment system. But then Paityr brought us the Stone … and Schueler’s promise of the ‘Archangels’ return.’ And that gave us a deadline we hadn’t known we faced.”

Nynian nodded, her own expression somber. None of that was new to her, although this was really the first time she’d been inside the gradual evolution of her Charisian allies’ thinking. By the time she’d become aware of them—and they’d become aware of her—that evolution had already completed itself.

“We don’t know for certain that the ‘Archangels’ are actually going to return at all,” Merlin said. “And if they do, we don’t know how they’ll return. One possibility would be for PICA ‘Archangels’ to suddenly emerge from vaults under the Temple. Frankly, I don’t think that’s likely, because if they’d prepared a stack of PICAs in the first place, they’d probably also have continued to interact with the flesh-and-blood population of Safehold. We had the capability to build a single PICA out of the resources in my cave, once Owl and Nahrmahn figured out how to do it. It’s for damn sure Chihiro and Schueler had that capability after Langhorne’s death. Oh, they might’ve needed to do the same research Owl did, although I think it’s more likely they would’ve already had the necessary information. But they certainly could’ve done it before or during the War Against the Fallen if they’d wanted to, and if they had, they could have had clearly superhuman ‘Archangels’ and ‘angels’ leading their armies in the field instead of relying on mortal seijins, like Kohdy. Think how that would have cemented the Church’s authority—especially if the same ‘Archangels’ or their ‘angelic’ successors were still available to be the Church’s public face.” He shook his head. “No, if they’d been willing to go the PICA route, then when Nimue Alban woke up in a PICA here on Safehold, her entire mission would have been flat out impossible instead of simply damned near impossible.”

Nynian nodded again, suppressing an inner shiver as she thought of the nightmare Merlin—Nimue—would have faced under those circumstances.

“So, if they’re ‘returning,’ it has to be in some other fashion, and, frankly, I don’t have a clue what that might be. For that matter, as I say, we don’t know they’re really going to ‘return’ at all. There’s nothing in the Writ about it, nothing in The Testimonies or The Commentaries. For that matter, there’s nothing in the message Schueler left. So unless there’s something in the Church’s secret archives that not even Paityr’s father ever heard so much as a hint about—which strikes me as unlikely, to say the least—the only evidence that they’re going to come back is the oral tradition passed down in the Wylsynn family, theoretically from Schueler himself but independent of the message he personally recorded.”

Merlin grimaced, the expression as frustrated as it was worried.

“Taking all of that together, I’d be very tempted to simply brush the whole thing off as a myth that self-started somehow over the last several hundred years. Unfortunately, Paityr tells us there are veiled allusions to the return in Wylsynn family diaries that date from within twenty years of the War Against the Fallen. So if it’s a self-starting myth, it self-started pretty damned early. And, leaving that aside completely, deciding there’s nothing to it would be the sort of wrong assumption we only get to make once.”

“Agreed,” Nynian said. “But that’s why we’re pushing so hard to ‘get the genie out of the bottle,’” she smiled faintly as she used the phrase Merlin had introduced her to. “Right?”

“Exactly.” Merlin nodded. “We’re looking at a binary solution set here, in a lot of ways. Either there’s going to be some sort of return of the ‘Archangels,’ or there isn’t. Even if there isn’t, we still need to figure out how to neutralize what’s under the Temple and/or the bombardment system eventually. Actually, now that I think about it, there’s no ‘and/or’ in it—we need to neutralize both of those to be sure something really, really bad doesn’t happen. We’re just under a lot more time pressure to get it done if they are coming back somehow.

“We may or may not be able to accomplish that, but unless we can manage that and get the industrial plant in Nimue’s Cave up and running and replicating itself—with at least a decade or so to spare—we’re still screwed. If we could pull that off, and if we had that decade to work with, we wouldn’t really care if the ‘Archangels’ decided to put in an actual physical reappearance of some sort.” He smiled coldly. “Give me four or five years of open Federation-level tech to work with, and I will guarantee that anything the ‘Archangels’ bring with them gets blown to hell and gone. And I can think of very few things that would give me more personal satisfaction!

“But if we can’t do that, we have to play for the possibility—the probability, I hope!—that whatever turns up calling itself an ‘Archangel’ isn’t quite as lunatic as Langhorne was when he pulled the trigger on the Alexandria Enclave. I have to think they wouldn’t be coming back at all if they didn’t want to make sure the human race survives. And killing the human race themselves wouldn’t strike me as the best way to do that, which is why we want the ‘genie out of the bottle.’ Spreading the violation of the Proscriptions—of their purpose, the thing they were supposed to achieve, at least—as broadly as possible, even if their word was still technically observed was always part of our gradualist strategy. But Paityr’s warning’s lent that strategy a lot more urgency, because if we can spread the new technology broadly enough that it would require a planet-wide application of ‘rakurai’ to eradicate all the threats to Langhorne’s grand plan, then anyone but a raving lunatic would realize that plan’s failed. We’re in no position to predict how he might react, but I think it’s likely any non-lunatic would see no option but to engineer as soft a landing to the Proscriptions’ collapse as possible.

“That’s why the economic implications of Ehdwyrd’s railroads and of steam-powered maritime trade are far more dangerous to the Church in the long term than any warship or artillery piece. But let’s be honest—it’s always possible for someone to cut off his economic nose to spite his face on religious grounds. God knows it was done often enough back on Old Earth! The ultimate consequences would be disastrous, and any realm that chose to do that would be a complete political and economic nonfactor within a generation. But that doesn’t mean they won’t do it, and I can easily imagine a reactionary ‘counterreformation’ throwing up all sorts of obstacles to stretch the process out even farther. Quite possibly for longer than we have before that return visit we’re worrying about.

“Enter the King Haarahlds.”

He leaned back in his chair again, raising both hands in the gesture of someone who’d just completed his revelation, and Nynian frowned.

“What are you talking about?” Her tone suggested she was on the cusp of understanding and knew it but hadn’t quite made the leap.

“A single King Haarahld is—as Captain Bahrns told Domynyk—more powerful than every other warship on the face of the planet put together, Nynian,” Sharleyan said. “Faster, bigger, more dangerous than anything she could conceivably face … and impossible to build without embracing—fully embracing—Ehdwyrd’s innovations. At the moment, the Temple’s supporters can argue that nothing we’re using against them is completely beyond their capabilities. They may not be able to produce weapons that do what ours do as effectively and efficiently as ours do it, but they’re in a position to convince themselves that theirs come close enough for an army equipped with enough of them to survive against an army equipped with Charisian new-model weapons.”

Nynian nodded slowly … and then her eyes widened and understanding flowed across her beautiful face.

“I knew you’d get there, love,” Merlin said, tucking an arm around her.

“They’re … they’re technology demonstrators!” she said.

“That’s exactly what they are,” Cayleb agreed in a tone of grim, profound satisfaction. “Mind you, I really would like to sail them into Temple Bay, but I’ve known all along we can’t, whatever I’ve suggested to people who don’t know what this war’s really about. But when Gwylym Manthyr steams right through anything that gets in her way without even slowing down, when she steams all the way from Tellesberg to Claw Island at twenty-plus knots with only a single refueling and shows she’s twice as fast as any galleon ever built, and when she steams into Gorath Bay and blows its fortifications into gravel, it isn’t going to be just the retribution Sharley and I promised ourselves—that we promised Gwylym. It’s going to be that, and Sharley’s going to make that point for our people before she ever sails. And it’s also going to be an object lesson to Zhaspahr Clyntahn and any other bloody-minded bastard who thinks the way he does. A warning about what will happen to anyone else who butchers our people or hands them over to be butchered by someone else. That’s a lesson we damned well mean to drive home to the bone, Nynian—as Emperor and Empress of Charis, not just members of the Inner Circle.

“But it’s going to be a different sort of object lesson, too, and no ruler who’s smarter than a rock is going to be able to miss its point. Without equivalent technology, no realm can survive against anyone who adopts it, and no one out there—from Mahrys of Desnair, to Rahnyld of Dohlar, to Emperor Waisu’s bureaucrats—hell, to that idiot Zhames in Delferahk!—is going to decide to trust that none of his enemies will build it. For that matter, they’ll know damned well we’re going to—that we already have—and even Greyghor, here in Siddarmark, is going to have to worry about the possibility that some perfectly legitimate dispute will someday arise between the Republic and us.

“So that’s what the King Haarahlds are, Nynian,” the Emperor of Charis said levelly, meeting her eyes across the study. “They’ll do the job at Gorath—that’s for damn sure—but just like you said, so would the Cities. They’re not Earl Sharpfield’s doorknockers; they’re Merlin’s, and the ‘door’ he has in mind is a hell of a lot more important than Gorath.”