At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.III.

East Point Battery

and

Royal Palace,

City of Gorath,

Kingdom of Dohlar.

The Earl of Thirsk stood alone at the observation tower’s front rail, watching the eastern horizon turn lavender and rose. Captain Stywyrt Baiket, who’d become his executive officer ashore when his longtime flagship was laid up to release her manpower for shore defense, stood several feet behind him, watching him a bit anxiously, and half a dozen aides and runners stood behind Baiket. For all that, Thirsk had been alone—alone with his thoughts, his worries … his responsibilities—as the black, moonless sky had slowly, slowly turned to gray. And now, as dawn crept timidly closer and he stared out across the Five Fathom Deep from the East Point Battery, his weary eyes strained to pierce the waning dark.

There were eighteen 12-inch Fultyn Rifles in that battery, which ought to make short work of any attacker … if, of course, the attacker in question chose to face them, and it was far from certain he would. Indeed, the choice of invasion routes for the Kingdom of Dohlar’s capital came down to a guessing game—the deadliest Thirsk had ever played—with thousands of lives on the line.

There were three avenues to choose between, now that the Charisians had forced the Zhulyet Channel and reduced Wreckers’ Island to churned, smoking wreckage.

East Gate Channel, the passage between East Point and Fishnet Island, was twelve and a half miles wide. That water gap could be closed—barely—by rifled artillery, as long as the batteries on both sides remained in action, although striking power and accuracy would be less than stellar against a target sailing straight down the center of the passage. They could hit it, but accuracy would be poor and the ability to penetrate Charisian armor plate would be … questionable, at best. That was why he’d laid the densest sea-bomb field of all squarely across East Gate’s center. An attacker could choose to pass close to one of the batteries—East Point or Fishnet—and endure the worst its guns could do, or he could sail down the center of the channel, where those guns would be far less effective, and accept the sea-bomb threat. The sea-bomb fuses remained much less reliable than he could have wished, and about thirty percent of them leaked badly enough to become useless within a five-day or two, but his men had laid hundreds of the things. If anyone was foolish enough to sail into that field, he would never sail out of it again.

The Middle Gate, between Fishnet Island and Alahnah Island, to its immediate west, was less than half that wide, which made it far easier to defend with artillery. But Tairayl’s Gate, the gap between Alahnah and Chelsee Point on the mainland, was over twenty miles across. No Dohlaran gun could hope to engage a target sailing down the middle of that broad expanse.

Fortunately, the water was shallower in Tairayl’s Gate than in East Gate Channel. The Middle Gate was actually the deepest of the three channels, and tidal scour combined with the current of the Gorath River to keep it that way. All three of them were deep enough for even the largest galleons, at least at high tide, but the deepwater channel through Tairayl’s Gate was more tortuous than most. In fact, it curved and twisted so sharply it was seldom used by galleons, since a wind that was fair for one leg of the passage was almost always dead foul for the next one. Threading a way through it could be a tricky piece of piloting even for a galley—or a steamer—no matter how well it was marked … and just now, it wasn’t marked at all. If any navy could navigate that passage even after someone had removed every buoy and extinguished every lighthouse, it was undoubtedly the Charisian Navy, but their armored steamers were far too valuable to risk casually. That was especially true after what had happened to them off Wreckers’ Island, he thought grimly, and he’d done what he could to make the choice even less attractive by placing sea-bombs at the trickiest points along the channel.

The Middle Gate had been harder to cover with sea-bombs because of the set of tide and current. The mooring cables kept breaking, and the Dohlaran merchant marine had discovered the hard way that a drifting sea-bomb had no friends. He’d persevered with the effort, but he couldn’t pretend he was satisfied with the result. On the other hand, its maximum width was under ten thousand yards. That was why the batteries on Alahnah and Fishnet accounted for well over a third of his total heavy rifles—including all six of the 15-inch rifles the Temple Lands foundries had managed to deliver—despite the islands’ small size. He had only twenty-five rounds for each of the 15-inchers, and the guns were actually shorter ranged than the 12-inch pieces, but they hit with devastating power and they were backed by twenty-four more 12-inchers and thirty 8-inch weapons. He rather doubted anyone who’d already experienced what the heavy Fultyns could do would choose to run that gauntlet at such a short range unless he had to.

All of that was true, but it was also true that it had never occurred to him when he’d planned the capital’s defenses that the Charisians might be able to sweep the sea-bombs out of their way. His reports from the previous day’s fighting were less complete than he might wish, but almost all of them agreed that they’d demonstrated an ability to do just that, even under heavy fire, and that made all of his planning suspect. From the reports he’d received, he doubted their bombsweepers made Tairayl’s Gate any more attractive, since the technique they’d developed apparently required them to steam in straight lines. Tairayl’s Gate didn’t lend itself to those sorts of courses.

The East Gate, unfortunately, did.

That was why he was standing atop this observation tower awaiting the dawn. If he’d been in Baron Sarmouth’s shoes, and if those fragmentary reports were accurate, his decision would have been simple. Assuming his converted barges truly could clear the sea-bombs, the East Gate’s simpler piloting, coupled with how much farther from the defensive batteries he could stay, made it his obvious choice. It was always possible he’d choose another route simply because it was less obvious. His tactics in the Trosan Channel and off Shipworm Shoal indicated how well he understood the advantages of surprise. But the Imperial Charisian Navy was equally well aware of the risk in being too clever, and East Gate’s attractions were simply too compelling to be ignored.

If the sea-bombs could be cleared.

That was why he’d committed the last fifteen screw-galleys of the Royal Dohlaran Navy last night.

He hadn’t planned on using them at all, even though he’d drilled them in night attacks ever since the Battle of Shipworm Shoal. That battle had made it obvious daylight attacks were suicidal even against ironclad galleons, far less the ICN’s steam-powered monsters, but he’d hoped the darkness might allow them to finally employ their spar torpedoes … until yesterday, at least. He hadn’t truly allowed for how fast and maneuverable—and incredibly hard to kill—the steamers were. True, his men had sent two to the bottom and severely damaged a third. Numerically, that was almost half the attacking force. But given the difference between the smaller steamers and the one the Charisians had named for Gwyllym Manthyr, it represented barely a quarter—if that—of Sarmouth’s firepower. Against that sort of armored target, only the spar torpedoes could hope to have any effect, but he’d quickly realized that the chance of a screw-galley getting a torpedo into attack range of something that fast and heavily armed, even in the dark, had been so slim as to be nonexistent.

But the bombsweepers were much smaller, unarmored, unarmed, and—if the reports were accurate—slower than the screw-galleys. They’d be easy meat for the screw-galleys’ massive forward batteries, most of which now mounted 8-inch rifles, and they represented the Charisians’ only path through the sea-bombs. So if the screw-galleys could get through to them, destroy or cripple enough of them to prevent the survivors from clearing the East Gate.…

There’d never been much chance of accomplishing anything more than a temporary delay, even if the attack succeeded, but the Navy’s honor—and the increasingly evident agents inquisitor patrolling Gorath’s streets—had demanded they try. And so he’d sent them out, knowing the Charisians had to be on the lookout for exactly that sort of attack, and their officers and men had never flinched. The black-painted screw-galleys, stripped of masts and sails to make them even harder to see, had slipped silently out of the harbor in the very last of the fading sunset, with scarcely a ripple to mark their passing, and Thirsk had planted himself atop this very tower to await their return.

He was still waiting.

You know what happened, he told himself grimly. They’d’ve been back by now if they were coming. The only real question is how many more hundred men you just sent to their deaths, Lywys.

His jaw tightened, but he refused to lie to himself. Those hadn’t been lightning flashes last night. They’d been too distant for him to hear anything over the steady, rhythmic wash of waves against the East Point beaches, but he’d known they were the savage flashes of artillery and the glare of Charisian star shells. The firing hadn’t gone on very long, and if any of his screw-galleys had survived it, there’d been plenty of time for them to return by now.

I am so tired of sending young men out to die for those bastards in Zion, he thought bitterly. But at least I—

A rim of blinding sunlight heaved itself over the eastern horizon, and Lywys Gardynyr’s jaw clenched painfully as the rich golden light raced out across the sixty-mile-wide stretch of water called Five Fathom Deep.

* * *

Had Thirsk only realized it, he was less alone than he thought he was. Sir Dunkyn Yairley might be standing beside Halcom Bahrns on Bahrns’ navigation bridge, but that didn’t prevent him from looking out over Five Fathom Deep with the Dohlaran earl through the eyes of the tiny remote on Thirsk’s shoulder, and his expression was grimly satisfied at the view they shared.

HMS Gwylym Manthyr steamed straight for the center of East Gate Channel, gliding across the smooth, sun-gilded water under the vigilant white eye of her kite balloon while a banner of coal smoke trailed astern. A double trio of bombsweepers swept the waters ahead of her; HMS Bayport, HMS Cherayth, and HMS Tanjyr followed her; and four more bombsweepers flanked the slow-moving column of armored warships. The badly damaged Gairmyn, half her guns out of action, her casemate blackened by fire, her funnel bleeding smoke from dozens of splinter holes, listing four degrees to starboard, and riding well over a foot deeper than her design waterline, brought up the rear with the ammunition colliers … and the three crippled Dohlaran screw-galleys which had survived long enough to surrender.

Those screw-galleys had been Sarmouth’s greatest anxiety after the savagery of the Zhulyet Channel. They’d been slower, less maneuverable, and far more vulnerable than Manthyr or his remaining Cities, but if they’d been able to creep in close enough in the darkness.…

Fortunately, the ICN had evolved a doctrine to deal with them, and it had worked well. The combination of star shells and rockets had stripped away the darkness, and Manthyr’s 4-inch breechloaders had been absolutely lethal, far deadlier than the Cities’ slower firing 6-inch guns. Only three of the screw-galleys had gotten in close enough to engage with their own guns; none had managed a torpedo attack; and all their efforts had managed to sink only one bombsweeper.

He’d felt more like a murderer than an admiral, in many ways. Not one of the screw-galleys had tried to run. Every one of them had been sunk or crippled trying to close with their enemies with an unswerving gallantry which deserved far better than it had achieved. Their courage had won his ungrudging respect, but that hadn’t prevented him from crushing the attack, and if he’d regretted their deaths, at least it had been gratifying to find something working as planned.

He’d be a long time forgiving himself for what had happened to Eraystor and Riverbend, even though he still knew intellectually that Zhaztro had been right about which ships could be risked. The consequences if Mahntayl’s rockets had hit Manthyr instead of the Cities would almost certainly have been far worse, even just in terms of absolute casualties. No one could argue with that, but.…

But if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying hard enough, he thought. You forgot that one, Dunkyn, and now Hainz and all those other men are gone. His eyes hardened. Avoiding any appearance of “demonic intervention” had damned well better be worth it in the end.

That remained to be seen, but there was one thing he could do this morning, “demonic intervention” or not, and he really didn’t care if it compromised that political objective. He was through seeing his men die if it could be avoided.

Better get out from under, My Lord, he thought in Thirsk’s direction. You’re not supposed to be part of the body count today, but if it happens, it happens.

“I believe it’s about time, Halcom,” he said.

“Of course, My Lord,” Bahrns said after the slightest of hesitations, and Sarmouth hid a bittersweet smile. His flag captain had seemed a bit … bemused when he issued his instructions this morning. But whatever he might have thought, he hadn’t argued, and now he bent over the bridge pelorus and took a careful bearing on the observation tower upon which the Earl of Thirsk stood. Then he swung the pelorus and took a cross bearing on the flagstaff of Fishnet Island’s East Battery.

“All stop,” he said, still gazing across the pelorus.

“All stop, aye, Sir,” the telegraphsman acknowledged. He rocked the engine room repeaters’ big brass handles, moving the pointer in the engine room. “All stop,” he confirmed, and the pulse of Gwylym Manthyr’s engines stilled, as if some great sea creature’s heart had suddenly stopped beating.

“Prepare to anchor,” Bahrns said.

“Prepare to anchor, aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Bestyr acknowledged.

“Very good,” the captain murmured, still bent over the pelorus, as Manthyr’s momentum carried her silently onward, like some fourteen-thousand-ton ghost. He stayed that way for several more minutes, then raised his head as Manthyr reached exactly the correct bearing from East Point.

“Let go the stern anchor!” he said crisply, and Gwylym Manthyr’s stern anchor plunged into the water with a massive roar of anchor chain. Bahrns straightened and crossed to the forward edge of the bridge, then stood patiently, fingers of his right hand drumming against his thigh while Manthyr’s momentum sailed out the anchor chain and her speed bled away. Then—

“Let go the bow anchor!” he said, and Manthyr’s starboard bow anchor plunged. “Power on the after capstan,” he continued. “Veer cable forward.”

Gwylym Manthyr edged slowly backwards for two or three minutes as the after capstan sucked in anchor chain and the forward capstan paid it out. Bahrns watched critically, balancing her between the two anchors with finicky precision until, at last, she came to rest, the current of the outgoing tide raising a tiny ripple around her stem, exactly equidistant from the batteries on Fishnet and East Point.

“Secure the capstans,” he said then, and waited while the order was carried out. Then he turned to Sarmouth once more.

“Prepared to engage, My Lord,” he said simply.

* * *

The Earl of Thirsk stared in disbelief.

The Charisian ironclad’s captain had handled his enormous command with impressive skill, almost as if she’d been one of the ICN’s nimble schooners. That had been his first thought. He’d been a bit puzzled by how slowly she’d moved, but it had been obvious she meant to split the difference between East Point and Fishnet. That had suggested a lot more trust in the bombsweepers’ ability to protect her than he’d expected out of someone as experienced as Sarmouth.

He has to know I’d have laid as many sea-bombs as I could to cover the East Gate, and somehow I doubt those sweepers of his can guarantee to clear all of them out of his path! He can’t be going to deliberately take that ship straight into them!

The very thought had been insane, yet that had been exactly what was happening, and he’d felt himself tightening internally, waiting for the first explosion. But then his eyes had gone wide. She was anchoring—anchoring!—just over eleven thousand yards from East Point … and exactly the same distance from Fishnet. What struck him first was the fact that Sarmouth was anchoring at all, surrendering the mobility which would have made his flagship a far more difficult target. Then he realized Manthyr’s position allowed her gunners to engage with both broadsides at once, from an absolutely stable and unmoving platform, while simultaneously placing her at the very limit of his own range. Just reaching her would require his gunners to use dangerously heavy charges—the kind that led to burst guns and dead and mangled gunners—and even so, their shells would have precious little penetrating power when they got there.

And then the rest of it struck him.

She hadn’t just anchored, hadn’t just positioned herself perfectly to engage both batteries simultaneously. No, she’d also anchored when the bombsweepers in front of her had been a mere two hundred yards, less than half a cable, outside his sea-bombs. And Sarmouth hadn’t anchored because anyone had suddenly spotted the sea-bombs or because his sweepers had abruptly brought one to the surface. There’d been no haste, no urgency, to the maneuver. No, he’d anchored with slow, deliberate precision, exactly where he’d intended to anchor from the very beginning. And that meant—

He knows where they are. The thought ran through Thirsk’s brain. He knows exactly where they are. Shan-wei! Either he’s the luckiest flag officer in the entire world, or else he knows where they are even better than I do!

An icy shiver went through him. It was entirely possible Charisian spies had watched those sea-bombs being laid. He’d had ample proof of how effortlessly at least one Charisian “spy” could penetrate Gorath undetected. But they could scarcely have found a spot to take detailed bearings on the vessels laying the sea-bombs without someone seeing them. And without those bearings, they couldn’t possibly have provided Sarmouth with information accurate enough for him to accomplish what he’d just done. Even with that kind of information, Thirsk doubted any Dohlaran captain could have duplicated that maneuver.

He wanted to think it had been only a spectacularly lucky guess on Sarmouth’s part, but then two of the ironclad’s escorting bombsweepers crossed in front of her on opposite courses, dropping buoys over the side, and Thirsk’s jaw clenched as he realized they were deploying floater nets. Floater nets designed to catch any drifting sea-bomb well short of Gwylym Manthyr.

Obviously Sarmouth did know where they were, and he was taking no chances on one of them breaking loose.

* * *

“Handsomely done, Halcom,” Sarmouth congratulated his flag captain.

“Thank you, My Lord.” Bahrns smiled crookedly, his eyes on the bombsweepers deploying the protective nets. “I hope it won’t offend you if I admit I was a little nervous about the whole thing.”

“Offend?” Sarmouth chuckled. “No, Halcom. Sanity never offends me. I suppose I was guilty of what His Majesty likes to call a ‘calculated risk’—when he’s the one taking it, at least—but we did have the sweepers out front, you know.”

“Yes, My Lord, I do.”

Sarmouth heard the hint of repressiveness in his captain’s tone and chuckled again. But then his expression hardened.

“Well, here we are, the men’ve had breakfast, and we’ve got the entire day to work with.” He smiled grimly and began fitting the plugs into his ears. “Under the circumstances, I believe we should be about it.”

* * *

“You should leave now, My Lord,” a voice said quietly.

Thirsk turned his head. Stywyrt Baiket stood at his right shoulder, spyglass raised to his eye, and his voice was so low no one could have heard him from more than a very few feet away.

“I don’t think so,” Thirsk replied, turning his own eyes back to the massive, anchored ironclad.

The pair of heavy guns fore and aft were rotating to starboard with mechanical smoothness, obviously powered by the same steam that drove the ship’s propellers. Sarmouth had decided which of his two targets deserved their attention first, the earl thought, watching the muzzles turn in his direction.

“Then you’re wrong, My Lord.”

Baiket’s voice was even lower, but it had acquired a steely edge, and Thirsk looked at him again. The captain lowered his spyglass to meet his eyes levelly.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I know why you’re thinking it. But this is my job now, not yours, and there’s not a man in the entire Navy who doesn’t know how badly we’ll need you going forward. We can’t risk losing you, My Lord. Not when you have so much still to do after the battle.”

His tone said more than his words, and Thirsk’s heart sank as he realized what the other man was truly saying … and that he was right.

“You’re not ‘abandoning your post,’ My Lord,” Baiket said almost gently. “You’re making sure you’ll be available for a job only you can do.”

“You’re right … Shan-wei take it,” Thirsk muttered and clasped Baiket’s shoulder with his good hand. “You’re right. But watch yourself, Stywyrt. I don’t have that many friends left—see to it I don’t lose another one!”

“Dying’s not on my to-do list, My Lord,” Baiket assured him with a smile. “I’ve got too much to look forward to! This next little bit’s going to be a mite on the … unpleasant side, maybe, but later—!”

His smile grew broader and much, much colder as their gazes held for a handful of seconds. Then he twitched his head at the observation tower stair.

“Best you were going now, My Lord. In fact, I’ll go with you as far as the command post. Somehow,” he raised his spyglass for one last glance at the long, slender guns elevating in his direction, “I think it’s going to get a little noisy around here.”

* * *

The smoke was thicker than a Fairstock fog, Bishop Executor Wylsynn Lainyr thought grimly.

There was virtually no wind to disperse it, and it had settled like a curse, growing thicker and thicker while the fires burned. He hadn’t had this much difficulty picking his way through a city’s streets, even after dark, since his last visit home in Hayzor. His carriage’s powerful lamps penetrated no more than a few yards—barely far enough for the coachman to see the heads of his horses—and the pedestrians they passed had wet cloths tied over their mouths and noses.

Of course, there weren’t many of those pedestrians.

The streets and avenues of Gorath were deserted, turned into ghostly, smoke-shrouded places abandoned to fear and the night. It wasn’t really dark, though. The roaring flames consuming the Royal Dohlaran Navy’s massive dockyards and warehouses turned the smoke into a glowing cocoon. The short coach trip from Gorath Cathedral to King Rahnyld’s palace had been like a voyage through clouded amber, but it was an amber tinted with the red of the flames, not warm and golden, and it pulsed like the beating of some enormous heart as those flames roared and danced all along the southeastern end of the city.

There were more flames farther north, where the foundries which had produced the kingdom’s heavy artillery had been reduced to rubble, and the entire city had shivered like a terrified animal when a heretic shell landed directly atop the Navy Arsenal and touched off its main magazine in a stupendous, roaring explosion that had rolled on and on for what had seemed an hour.

Yet for all of that, the city itself had suffered remarkably little damage. The heretics had blasted their way in through East Gate Channel, demolished the East Point batteries, and swept away the sea-bombs Earl Thirsk and Duke Fern had promised would be so effective. Then they’d advanced on the city itself.

The smaller ironclads had smashed the batteries protecting the waterfront and the Navy Yard, then turned their attention to Gorath’s famous golden walls. They’d obviously come to deliver a message to the city which had delivered their sailors to the Inquisition not once, but twice, and they’d reduced the entire seaward face of its walls to broken and blasted wreckage with shell after methodical shell, fired with the metronome steadiness of a formal salute. And while they were doing that, the enormous ironclad—the ironclad named for the accursed heretic Mother Church had given to the Punishment in Zion itself—had trained its guns on rather different targets. It had anchored again—anchored—in full view of any citizen of Gorath who’d cared to look, and begun the careful, systematic, unhurried destruction of the shipyards, manufactories, foundries, and warehouses which supported the Royal Dohlaran Navy and Army.

The implications of its obvious and utter contempt for anything Gorath’s defenders could do had been terrifying, but the reach and accuracy of its fire had been even more frightening. Lainyr was no military man. He’d had no idea how the heretics could drop their shells so accurately, with a precision the finest surgeon might have envied, on targets that couldn’t even be seen from Queen Zhakleen Harbor, but he didn’t doubt Captain Gairybahldy’s explanation was correct. It was the balloon. It was the accursed, no doubt demonic, balloon. It hung above the ironclad, watching the fall of its shells, sending down corrections, and the thunderbolts of destruction had marched across their targets with devastating effect.

And the bastards were careful not to hit the residential areas, Lainyr thought grimly.

For all the pervasiveness of the smoke, only a handful of shells had landed anywhere near the city’s houses or apartment buildings, and they’d obviously missed their intended targets. The Navy Yard, the manufactories and warehouses, the city’s walls had been demolished by hit after hit, yet it had been painfully obvious the heretics were carefully avoiding civilian casualties.

And the people of Gorath knew it. They knew the navy which had every reason to hate their kingdom, whose monarchs had declared the basis for those reasons time and again, whose dead sailors had been dropped into Gorath Bay like so much refuse, denied even burial in consecrated ground, and whose living sailors had been delivered to the hideous provisions of the Punishment, were deliberately not killing them. Destroying their city’s manufactories, smashing its walls and its fortifications, yes; killing the civilians of that city, no.

The word that the heretics—the savage, bloodthirsty heretics the Inquisition had assured them sacrificed babies to Shan-wei and routinely burned Temple Loyalist churches to the ground, generally with their congregations locked up inside them—were trying not to kill them or their families and children had spread rapidly among the capital’s inhabitants. Ahbsahlahn Kharmych’s agents inquisitor had already confirmed that, and Lainyr didn’t want to think about the speculation that restraint was bound to spawn, especially after all the casualties Dohlar had suffered in the service of Mother Church. King Rahnyld’s subjects’ confidence in the Jihad—and in its justification, little though Lainyr liked admitting that—had been crumbling for months. Langhorne only knew what would happen to it now, but the bishop executor didn’t expect it to be good.

“Five more minutes, Your Eminence.”

Lainyr turned his head as Captain Gairybahldy leaned from the saddle and spoke through the open carriage window. Like everyone they’d passed, the captain had tied a wet bandanna across his face. It made him look like a highwayman, Lainyr thought. Or like some other sinister criminal, at any rate. That was an image Mother Church’s protectors didn’t need to be projecting just now, and a petty, petulant part of him thought about snapping an order to take it off—and for all of Gairybahldy’s men to do the same.

But there’s no point, he thought wearily. And how likely is that, really, to add to the … demoralization this city’s already suffered?

“Thank you, Captain,” he said, courteously, instead, and leaned back in his seat opposite Kharmych and closed his eyes in silent prayer.

* * *

Closed windows and doors might keep the worst of the city’s smoke at bay, but the stink of it penetrated even to the heart of the royal palace. Lainyr would have preferred to think it had come in on his own clothing, but the faintest haze was visible in the longer palace corridors, hanging in nebulous halos around the lamps which lit them.

He followed their guide down the crimson runner and the council chamber doors opened wide at their approach.

“The Bishop Executor and Father Kharmych, My Lords,” the liveried footman announced, and stood aside as the clerics passed through the doors, followed by Captain Gairybahldy. The men seated at the table—the Duke of Fern, the Duke of Salthar, and Baron Yellowstone—rose as they entered.

“Your Eminence, Father,” Fern greeted them.

“Your Grace,” Lainyr replied, but he also paused just inside the doors.

“Is something wrong, Your Eminence?” Fern inquired.

“I was about to ask you that,” Lainyr replied. “May I ask where Duke Thorast is? And it was my impression His Majesty intended to be present for the discussion of the capital’s defense.”

“Duke Thorast has been unavoidably detained, I’m afraid,” Fern replied, gesturing with one hand towards the comfortable chairs waiting for Lainyr and Kharmych. “And His Majesty is currently with the healers.”

“With the healers?” Lainyr repeated sharply, resuming his progress towards the table. “Was he injured during the attack?!”

“No, Your Eminence. I assure you, if he had been you would already have heard. No, he’s simply experiencing some difficulty with his breathing because of the smoke. The healers don’t think it’s anything serious, but his personal physician wants to keep an eye on him until they’re positive of that.”

“I see.” Lainyr extended his ring for Fern to kiss, then settled into his chair, Gairybahldy at his back like an armsman, as the Dohlaran councilors sat back down. “And do we know how long Duke Thorast will be delayed?”

“For quite some time, I’m afraid, Your Eminence,” another voice said, and Lainyr’s head whipped around.

He hadn’t heard the well-oiled hinges when the doors opened again behind him. Nor had he heard the boots crossing the thick, expensive carpet. But he recognized that voice, and his eyes flared as he saw the Earl of Thirsk.

The Admiral wasn’t alone, and the color drained from the bishop executor’s face as he saw Sir Rainos Ahlverez at Thirsk’s left shoulder … and Bishop Staiphan Maik at his right. There was a pistol in Ahlverez’ hand, aimed directly at Captain Gairybahldy’s head, and the general shook his head very slightly when the Guardsman whipped around and his hand started towards his own pistol.

Gairybahldy froze, standing very still indeed under the blank, cold eye of that pistol muzzle, but Ahbsahlahn Kharmych shot to his feet.

“What’s the meaning of this?!” the intendant thundered. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“I should think that would be clear even to you, Father,” Thirsk replied coolly. “For your information, however, units of the Army and Navy are currently arresting every agent inquisitor in Gorath.” He shrugged slightly at Kharmych’s stunned expression. “We may miss a few, and I’m afraid there may be a little breakage. The officers and sergeants assigned to that duty are mostly survivors of the Army of Shiloh or veterans from the Army of the Seridahn. I’m afraid they’re unlikely to show a great deal of patience if any of your agents offer resistance. For some reason, they aren’t very fond of inquisitors.”

Kharmych stared at him, frozen, as he and Bishop Staiphan walked around the end of the table to the Duke of Fern’s chair. The bishop’s face was stone, his eyes harder than flint as they met Lainyr’s horrified gaze, and the bishop executor’s frozen heart plummeted as he read the message in that unyielding countenance. Ahlverez stayed where he was as another half-dozen men in Army uniform filtered into the room, bayoneted rifles carried at a position of port arms, and Duke Fern rose once again, to stand beside Thirsk and Staiphan Maik.

“At this moment,” the earl continued, “Sir Rainos’ senior aide, Captain Lattymyr, is at the Cathedral with two platoons of Army of Shiloh veterans. It’s a pity Archbishop Trumahn’s business in Zion has continued to prevent his return, but I’m confident Father Rahndail will be able to direct the Captain to General Rychtyr’s chambers so that the General can accompany Sir Lynkyn back to the Palace. In the meantime,” he smiled thinly and settled into the chair Fern had just vacated, while Bishop Staiphan moved to stand at one shoulder and the first councilor—the former first councilor, Lainyr realized numbly—moved to stand at the other, “I think we should by all means begin that discussion about how to defend this city.

“And against whom.”