How firm a foundation

MARCH, YEAR OF GOD 895

Ehdwyrd Howsmyn’s foundry, Earldom of High Rock, Kingdom of Old Charis

The blast furnace screamed, belching incandescent fury against the night, and the sharpness of coal smoke blended with the smell of hot iron, sweat, and at least a thousand other smells Father Paityr Wylsynn couldn’t begin to identify. The mingled scent of purpose and industry hung heavy in the humid air, catching lightly at the back of his throat even through the panes of glass.

He stood gazing out Ehdwyrd Howsmyn’s office window into the hot summer darkness and wondered how he’d come here. Not just the trip to this office, but to why he was here… and to what was happening inside his own mind and soul.

“A glass of wine, Father?” Howsmyn asked from behind him, and the priest turned from the window.

“Yes, thank you,” he agreed with a smile.

For all his incredible (and steadily growing) wealth, Howsmyn preferred to dispense with servants whenever possible, and the young intendant watched him pour with his own hands. The ironmaster extended one of the glasses to his guest, then joined him beside the window, looking out over the huge sprawl of the largest ironworks in the entire world.

It was, Wylsynn admitted, an awesome sight. The furnace closest to the window (and it wasn’t actually all that close, he acknowledged) was only one of dozens. They fumed and smoked like so many volcanoes, and when he looked to his right he could see a flood of molten iron, glowing with a white heart of fury, flowing from a furnace which had just been tapped. The glare of the fuming iron lit the faces of the workers tending the furnace, turning them into demon helpers from the forge of Shan-wei herself as the incandescent river poured into the waiting molds.

Howsmyn’s Delthak foundries never slept. Even as Wylsynn watched, draft dragons hauled huge wagons piled with coke and iron ore and crushed limestone along the iron rails Howsmyn had laid down, and the rhythmic thud and clang of water-powered drop hammers seemed to vibrate in his own blood and bone. When he looked to the east, he could see the glow of the lampposts lining the road all the way to Port Ithmyn, the harbor city the man who’d become known throughout Safehold as “The Ironmaster of Charis” had built on the west shore of Lake Ithmyn expressly to serve his complex. Port Ithmyn was over four miles away, invisible with distance, yet Wylsynn could picture the lanterns and torches illuminating its never-silent waterfront without any difficulty at all.

If Clyntahn could see this he’d die of sheer apoplexy, Wylsynn reflected, and despite his own internal doubts-or possibly even because of them-the thought gave him intense satisfaction. Still…

“I can hardly believe all you’ve accomplished, Master Howsmyn,” he said, waving his wineglass at everything beyond the window. “All this out of nothing but empty ground just five years ago.” He shook his head. “You Charisians have done a lot of amazing things, but I think this is possibly the most amazing of all.”

“It wasn’t quite ‘nothing but empty ground,’ Father,” Howsmyn disagreed. “Oh,” he grinned, “it wasn’t a lot more than empty ground, that’s true, but there was the village here. And the fishing village at Port Ithmyn. Still, I’ll grant your point, and God knows I’ve plowed enough marks back into the soil, as it were.”

Wylsynn nodded, accepting the minor correction. Then he sighed and turned to face his host squarely.

“Of course, I suspect the Grand Inquisitor would have a few things to say if he could see it,” he said. “Which is rather the point of my visit.”

“Of course it is, Father,” Howsmyn said calmly. “I haven’t added anything beyond those things you and I have discussed, but you’d be derelict in your duties if you didn’t reassure yourself of that. I think it’s probably too late to carry out any inspections tonight, but tomorrow morning we’ll look at anything you want to see. I would ask you to take a guide-there are some hazardous processes out there, and I’d hate to accidentally incinerate the Archbishop’s Intendant-but you’re perfectly welcome to decide for yourself what you want to look at or examine, or which of my supervisors or shift workers you’d care to interview.” He inclined his head in a gesture which wasn’t quite a bow. “You’ve been nothing but courteous and conscientious under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, Father. I can’t ask for more than that.”

“I’m glad you think so. On the other hand, I have to admit there are times I wonder-worry about-the slash lizard you’ve saddled here.” Wylsynn waved his glass at the fire-lit night beyond the window once more. “I know nothing you’ve done violates the Proscriptions, yet the sheer scale of your effort, and the… innovative way you’ve applied allowable knowledge is disturbing. The Writ warns that change begets change, and while it says nothing about matters of scale, there are those-not all of them Temple Loyalists, by any stretch-who worry that innovation on such a scale will inevitably erode the Proscriptions.”

“Which must put you in a most difficult position, Father,” Howsmyn observed.

“Oh, indeed it does.” Wylsynn smiled thinly. “It helps that Archbishop Maikel doesn’t share those concerns, and he’s supported all of my determinations where your new techniques are concerned. I don’t suppose that would make the Grand Inquisitor any more supportive, but it does quite a lot for my own peace of mind. And to be honest, the thought of how the Grand Inquisitor would react if he truly knew all you and the other ‘innovators’ here in Charis have been up to pleases me immensely. In fact, that’s part of my problem, I’m afraid.”

Howsmyn gazed at him for a moment, then cocked his head to one side.

“I’m no Bedardist, Father,” he said almost gently, “but I’d be astonished if you didn’t feel that way after what happened to your father and your uncle. Obviously, I don’t know you as well as the Archbishop does, but I do know you better than many, I expect, after how closely we’ve worked together for the past couple of years. You’re worried that your inevitable anger at Clyntahn and the Group of Four might cause you to overlook violations of the Proscriptions because of a desire to strike back at them, aren’t you?”

Wylsynn’s eyes widened with respect. It wasn’t really surprise; Ehdwyrd Howsmyn was one of the smartest men he knew, after all. Yet the ironmaster’s willingness to address his own concerns so directly, and the edge of compassion in Howsmyn’s tone, were more than he’d expected.

“That’s part of the problem,” he acknowledged. “In fact, it’s a very large part. I’m afraid it’s not quite all of it, however. The truth is that I’m grappling with doubts of my own.”

“We all are, Father.” Howsmyn smiled crookedly. “I hope this won’t sound presumptuous coming from a layman, but it seems to me that someone in your position, especially, would find that all but inevitable.”

“I know.” Wylsynn nodded. “And you’re right. However,” he inhaled more briskly, “at the moment I’m most interested in these ‘accumulators’ of yours. I may have seen the plans and approved them, yet there’s a part of me that wants to actually see them.” He smiled suddenly, the boyish expression making him look even younger than his years. “It’s difficult, as you’ve observed, balancing my duty as Intendant against my duty as Director of the Office of Patents, but the Director in me is fascinated by the possibilities of your accumulators.”

“I feel the same way,” Howsmyn admitted with an answering gleam of humor. “And if you’ll look over there”-he pointed out the window-“you’ll see Accumulator Number Three beside that blast furnace.”

Wylsynn’s eyes followed the pointing index finger and narrowed as the furnace’s seething glow illuminated a massive brickwork structure. As he’d just said, he’d seen the plans for Howsmyn’s accumulators, but mere drawings, however accurately scaled, couldn’t have prepared him for the reality.

The huge tower rose fifty feet into the air. A trio of blast furnaces clustered around it, and on the far side, a long, broad structure-a workshop of some sort-stretched into the night. The workshop was two stories tall, its walls pierced by vast expanses of windows to take advantage of natural light during the day. Now those windows glowed with internal light, spilling from lanterns and interspersed with frequent, far brighter bursts of glare from furnaces and forges within it.

“In another couple of months, I’ll have nine of them up and running,” Howsmyn continued. “I’d like to have more, honestly, but at that point we’ll be getting close to the capacity the river can supply. I’ve considered running an aqueduct from the mountains to increase supply, but frankly an aqueduct big enough to supply even one accumulator would be far too expensive. It’d tie up too much manpower I need elsewhere, for that matter. Instead, I’m looking at the possibility of using windmills to pump from the lake, although there are some technical issues there, too.”

“I can imagine,” Wylsynn murmured, wondering what would happen if the accumulator he could see sprang a leak.

The use of cisterns and water tanks to generate water pressure for plumbing and sewer systems had been part of Safehold since the Creation itself, but no one had ever considered using them the way Ehdwyrd Howsmyn was using them. Probably, Wylsynn thought, because no one else had ever had the sheer audacity to think on the scale the ironmaster did.

Howsmyn’s new blast furnaces and “puddling hearths” required levels of forced draft no one had ever contemplated before. He was driving them to unheard-of temperatures, recirculating the hot smoke and gases through firebrick flues to reclaim and utilize their heat in ways no one else ever had, and his output was exploding upward. And it was as if each new accomplishment only suggested even more possibilities to his fertile mind, like the massive new multi-ton drop hammers and the ever larger, ever more ambitious casting processes his workers were developing. All of which required still more power. Far more of it, in fact, than conventional waterwheels could possibly provide.

Which was where the concept for the “accumulator” had come from.

Waterwheels, as Howsmyn had pointed out in his patent and vetting applications, were inherently inefficient in several ways. The most obvious, of course, was that there wasn’t always a handy waterfall where you wanted one. Holding ponds could be built, just as he’d done here at Delthak, but there were limits on the head of pressure one could build up using ponds, and water flows could fluctuate at the most inconvenient times. So it had occurred to him that if he could accumulate enough water, it might be possible to build his own waterfall, one that was located where he needed it and didn’t fluctuate unpredictably. And if he was going to do that, he might as well come up with a more efficient design to use that artificial waterfall’s power, as well.

In many ways, vetting the application in Wylsynn’s role as Intendant had been simple and straightforward. Nothing in the Proscriptions of Jwo-jeng forbade any of Howsmyn’s proposals. They all fell within the Archangel’s trinity of acceptable power: wind, water, and muscle. True, nothing in the Writ seemed ever to have contemplated something on the scale Howsmyn had in mind, but that was scarcely a valid reason to deny him an attestation of approval. And wearing his hat as the Director of Patents, rather than his priest’s cap, Wylsynn had been more than pleased to grant Howsmyn the patent he’d requested.

And tomorrow morning I’ll inspect one of them with my own eyes, he reflected now. I hope I don’t fall into it!

His lips twitched in an almost-smile. He was quite a good swimmer, yet the thought of just how much water a structure the size of the accumulator might hold was daunting. He’d seen the numbers-Dr. Mahklyn at the Royal College had calculated them for him-but they’d been only figures on a piece of paper then. Now he was looking at the reality of a “cistern” fifty feet tall and thirty-five feet on a side, all raised an additional thirty feet into the air. According to Mahklyn, it held close to half a million gallons of water. That was a number Wylsynn couldn’t even have thought of before the introduction of the Arabic numerals which were themselves barely five years old. Yet all that water, and all the immense pressure it generated, was concentrated on a single pipe at the bottom of the accumulator-a single pipe almost wide enough for a man-well, a tall boy, at least-to stand in that delivered the accumulator’s outflow not to a waterwheel but to something Howsmyn had dubbed a “turbine.”

Another new innovation, Wylsynn thought, but still well within the Proscriptions. Jwo-jeng never said a wheel was the only way to generate water power, and we’ve been using windmills forever. Which is all one of his “turbines” really is, when all’s said; it’s just driven by water instead of wind.

Locating it inside the pipe, however, allowed the “turbine” to use the full force of all the water rushing through the pipe under all that pressure. Not only that, but the accumulator’s design meant the pressure reaching the turbine was constant. And while it took a half-dozen conventional waterwheels just to pump enough water to keep each accumulator supplied, the outflow from the turbine was routed back to the holding ponds supplying and driving the waterwheels, which allowed much of it to be recirculated and reused. Now if Howsmyn’s plans to pump water from the lake proved workable (as most of his plans seemed to do), his supply of water-and power-would be assured effectively year-round.

He’s got his canals completed now, too, the priest reflected. Now that he can barge iron ore and coal directly all the way from his mines up in the Hanth Mountains he can actually use all of that power. Archangels only know what that’s going to mean for his productivity!

It was a sobering thought, and the fresh increases in Delthak’s output were undoubtedly going to make Ehdwyrd Howsmyn even wealthier. More importantly, they were going to be crucial to the Empire of Charis’ ability to survive under the relentless onslaught of the Church of God Awaiting.

No, not the Church, Paityr, Wylsynn reminded himself yet again. It’s the Group of Four, that murderous bastard Clyntahn and the rest. They’re the ones trying to destroy Charis and anyone else who dares to challenge their perversion of everything Mother Church is supposed to stand for!

It was true. He knew it was true. And yet it was growing harder for him to make that separation as he watched everyone in the Church’s hierarchy meekly bend the knee to the Group of Four, accepting Clyntahn’s atrocities, his twisting of everything the Office of Inquisition was supposed to be and stand for. It was easy enough to understand the fear behind that acceptance. What had happened to his own father, his uncle, and their friends among the vicarate who’d dared to reject Clyntahn’s obscene version of Mother Church was a terrible warning of what would happen to anyone foolish enough to oppose him now.

Yet how had he ever come to hold the Grand Inquisitor’s office in the first place? How could Mother Church have been so blind, so foolish-so stupid and lost to her responsibility to God Himself-as to entrust Zhaspahr Clyntahn with that position? And where had the other vicars been when Clyntahn had Samyl and Hauwerd Wylsynn and the other members of their circle of reformers slaughtered? When he’d applied the Punishment of Schueler to vicars of Mother Church not for any error of doctrine, not any act of heresy, but for having the audacity to oppose him? None of the other vicars could have believed the Inquisition’s preposterous allegations against their Reformist fellows, yet not one voice had been raised in protest. Not one, when Langhorne himself had charged Mother Church’s priests to die for what they knew was true and right if that proved necessary.

He closed his eyes, listening to the shriek of the blast furnaces, feeling the disciplined energy and power pulsing around him, gathering itself to resist Clyntahn and the other men in far distant Zion who supported him, and felt the doubt gnawing at his certainty once again. Not at his faith in God. Nothing could ever touch that, he thought. But his faith in Mother Church. His faith in Mother Church’s fitness as the guardian of God’s plan and message to His children.

There were men fighting to resist the Group of Four’s corruption, yet they’d been forced to do it outside Mother Church-in despite of Mother Church-and in the process they were taking God’s message into other waters, subtly reshaping its direction and scope. Were they right to do that? Wylsynn’s own heart cried out to move in the same directions, to broaden the scope of God’s love in the same ways, but was he right to do that? Or had they all fallen prey to Shan-wei? Was the Mother of Deception using the Reformists’ own better natures, their own yearning to understand God, to lead them into opposition to God? Into believing God must be wise enough to think the same way they did rather than accepting that no mortal mind was great enough to grasp the mind of God? That it was not their job to lecture God but rather to hear His voice and obey it, whether or not it accorded with their own desires and prejudices? Their own limited understanding of all He saw and had ordained?

And how much of his own yearning to embrace that reshaped direction stemmed from his own searing anger? From the rage he couldn’t suppress, however hard he tried, when he thought about Clyntahn and the mockery he’d made of the Inquisition? From his fury at the vicars who’d stood idly by and watched it happen? Who even now acquiesced by their silence in every atrocity Clyntahn proclaimed in the name of his own twisted image of Mother Church, the Archangels, and God Himself?

And, terribly though it frightened and shamed him to ask the question, or even dare to admit he could feel such things, how much of it stemmed from his anger at God Himself, and at His Archangels, for letting this happen? If Shan-wei could seduce men through the goodness of their hearts, by subtly twisting their faith and their love for their fellow men and women, how much more easily might she seduce them through the dark poison of anger? And where might anger such as his all too easily lead?

I know where my heart lies, where my own faith lives, Paityr Wylsynn thought. Even if I wished to pretend I didn’t, that I weren’t so strongly drawn to the Church of Charis’ message, there’d be no point trying. The truth is the truth, however men might try to change it, but have I become part of the Darkness in my drive to serve the Light? And how does any man try-what right does he have to try-to be one of God’s priests when he can’t even know what the truth in his own heart is… or whether it springs from Light or Darkness?

He opened his eyes once more, looking out over the fiery vista of Ehdwyrd Howsmyn’s enormous foundry complex, and worried. .

HMS Royal Charis, 58, West Isle Channel, and Imperial Palace, Cherayth, Kingdom of Chisholm

The cabin lamps swung wildly, sending their light skittering across the richly woven carpets and the gleaming wood of the polished table. Glass decanters sang a mad song of vibration, planking and stout hull timbers groaned in complaint, wind howled, rain beat with icy fists on the skylight, and the steady cannon-shot impacts as HMS Royal Charis ’ bow slammed into one tall, gray wave after another echoed through the plunging ship’s bones.

A landsman would have found all of that dreadfully alarming, assuming seasickness would have allowed him to stop vomiting long enough to appreciate it. Cayleb Ahrmahk, on the other hand, had never suffered from seasickness, and he’d seen heavy weather bad enough to make the current unpleasantness seem relatively mild.

Well, maybe a bit more than relatively mild, if we’re going to be honest, he admitted to himself.

It was only late afternoon, yet as he gazed out through the stern windows at the raging sea in Royal Charis ’ wake it could have been night. True, by the standards of his own homeland, night came early in these relatively northern latitudes in midwinter, but this was early even for the West Isle Channel. Solid cloud cover tended to do that, and if this weather was merely… exceptionally lively, there was worse coming soon enough. The front rolling in across the Zebediah Sea to meet him was going to make this seem like a walk in the park.

“Lovely weather you’ve chosen for a voyage,” a female voice no one else aboard Royal Charis could hear remarked in his ear.

“I didn’t exactly choose it,” he pointed out in reply. He had to speak rather loudly for the com concealed in his jeweled pectoral scepter to pick up his voice amid all the background noise, but no one was likely to overhear him in this sort of weather. “And your sympathy underwhelms me, dear.”

“Nonsense. I know you, Cayleb. You’re having the time of your life,” Empress Sharleyan replied tartly from the study across the hall from their suite in the Imperial Palace. She sat in a comfortable armchair parked near the cast-iron stove filling the library with welcome warmth, and their infant daughter slept blessedly peacefully on her shoulder.

“He does rather look forward to these exhilarating moments, doesn’t he?” another, deeper voice observed over the same com net.

“Ganging up on me, Merlin?” Cayleb inquired.

“Simply stating the truth as I see it, Your Grace. The painfully obvious truth, I might add.”

Normally, Merlin would have been aboard Royal Ch a ris with Cayleb as the emperor’s personal armsman and bodyguard. Circumstances weren’t normal, however, and Cayleb and Sharleyan had agreed it was more important for the immediate future that he keep an eye on the empress. There wasn’t much for a bodyguard to do aboard a ship battling her way against winter headwinds across nine thousand-odd miles of salt water from Cherayth to Tellesberg. And not even a seijin who was also a fusion-powered PICA could do much about winter weather… except, of course, to see it coming through the SNARCs deployed around the planet. Cayleb could monitor that information as well as Merlin could, however, and he was just as capable of receiving Owl’s weather predictions from the computer’s hiding place under the far distant Mountains of Light.

Not that he could share that information with anyone in Royal Charis’ crew. On the other hand, the Imperial Charisian Navy had a near idolatrous faith in Cayleb Ahrmahk’s sea sense. If he told Captain Gyrard he smelled a storm coming, no one was going to argue with him.

“ He may not mind weather like this,” a considerably more sour voice inserted. “Some of the rest of us lack the sort of stomachs that seem to be issued to Charisian monarchs.”

“It’ll do you good, Nahrmahn,” Cayleb replied with a chuckle. “Ohlyvya’s been after you to lose weight, anyway. And if you can’t keep anything down, then by the time we reach Tellesberg you’re probably going to waste away to no more than, oh, half the man you are today.”

“Very funny,” Nahrmahn half growled.

Unlike Cayleb, who was gazing out into the dark the better to appreciate the weather, the rotund little Prince of Emerald was curled as close as he could fold himself into a miserable knot in his swaying cot. He wasn’t quite as seasick as Cayleb’s rather callous remark suggested, but he was quite seasick enough to be going on with.

His wife, Princess Ohlyvya, on the other hand, was as resistant to motion sickness as Cayleb himself. Nahrmahn found that a particularly unjust dispensation of divine capriciousness, since she’d said very much the same thing the emperor just had to him that very morning. At the moment, she was sitting in a chair securely lashed to the deck, knitting, and he heard her soft chuckle over the com.

“I suppose it really isn’t all that funny, dear,” she said now. “Still, we all know you’ll get over it in another five-day or so. You’ll be just fine.” She waited half a beat. “Assuming the ship doesn’t sink, of course.”

“At the moment, that would be something of a relief,” Nahrmahn informed her.

“Oh, stop complaining and think about all the scheming and planning and skullduggery you’ll have to keep you occupied once we get home again!”

“Ohlyvya’s right, Nahrmahn,” Sharleyan said, and her voice was rather more serious than it had been. “Cayleb’s going to need you to help sort out the mess. Since I can’t be there to help out myself, I’m just as happy you can be.”

“I appreciate the compliment, Your Majesty,” Nahrmahn said. “All the same, I can’t help thinking how much more comfortable it would have been to provide all that assistance from a nice, motionless bedroom in Cherayth.”

“Coms are all well and good,” Sharleyan replied, “but he’s going to need someone to obviously confer with instead of just listening to voices out of thin air. And having another warm body he can send out to do things isn’t going to hurt one bit, either.”

“I have to agree with that,” Cayleb said. “Although trying to picture any Charisian’s reaction to the notion of using Prince Nahrmahn of Emerald as an official representative and emissary a couple of years ago boggles the mind.”

“I’m sure it boggles your mind less than mine,” Nahrmahn replied tartly, and it was Cayleb’s turn to chuckle. “On the other hand, it’s worked out better-and a lot more satisfyingly-than several alternatives I could think of right offhand,” the Emeraldian continued a bit more seriously.

“I’d have to agree with that, too,” Cayleb acknowledged. “Although I wish to hell you and I didn’t have to go home and assist each other with this mess.”

“I wish you didn’t have to either,” Sharleyan agreed somberly, “but this mess is a lot less ugly than the one we could’ve had.”

Cayleb nodded, his expression sober, at the accuracy of her remark.

The Navy of God had outnumbered the Imperial Charisian Navy by a terrifying margin when they met in the Gulf of Tarot barely two months ago. Of the twenty-five Charisian galleons who’d engaged, one had been completely destroyed, eleven had been reduced to near wrecks, five more had lost masts and spars, and only eight had emerged more or less intact. Charis had suffered over three thousand casualties, more than half of them fatal… including Cayleb’s cousin, High Admiral Bryahn Lock Island. Yet hideously expensive as the victory had been, it had also been overwhelming. Forty-nine of the Navy of God’s galleons had been captured. Fourteen had been destroyed in action, another seventeen had been scuttled after their capture as too damaged to be worth keeping, and only nine had actually managed to escape. Forty-one Harchongese galleons had been captured, as well, and the blow to the Church’s naval power had been devastating.

Cayleb Ahrmahk had never felt so useless as he had watching that titanic engagement through Merlin’s SNARCs. He’d seen every moment of it, including his cousin’s death, but he’d been the better part of eight thousand miles away, unable to do anything but watch the death and destruction. Almost worse, there’d been no acceptable way for him and Sharleyan even to know the battle had been fought. They’d had to pretend they knew nothing about it, had no idea how desperate it had been or how many men had died obeying their orders. Even when Admiral Kohdy Nylz had arrived with the reinforcements dispatched to Chisholm when they’d anticipated the Church was sending its ships west to join Admiral Thirsk in Dohlar instead of east to the Desnairian Empire, they’d been unable to discuss it with him in any way.

It had taken another full two and a half five-days for a weather-battered schooner to arrive with Admiral Rock Point’s official dispatches, and the only good thing was that their inner circle had had plenty of time by then to confer and make plans over their coms. Which was why Cayleb was already on his way back to Tellesberg, despite the fact that he and Sharleyan had been scheduled to remain in Cherayth for another month and a half. And it was also the reason Sharleyan wasn’t headed back to Tellesberg with him.

One of them had to return. In theory, they could have used their coms to coordinate responses with Rock Point, Archbishop Maikel Staynair, Baron Wave Thunder, and the inner circle’s other members in Tellesberg from Cherayth. In fact, that’s what they’d been doing, in many ways. But there were limits to what their subordinates could do on their own authority, which meant either Cayleb or Sharleyan had to be there in person. For that matter, the entire world would be expecting one or both of them to return to Old Charis after such a cataclysmic shift in naval power. They couldn’t afford the sort of questions not returning might arouse, and the truth was that Cayleb wanted to be there. Not that he was going to get there in any kind of hurry. This time of year, they’d be lucky if Royal Charis could make the crossing in less than two months, although Cayleb expected they’d be able to shave at least a five-day or so off of the time anyone else might have managed.

Unfortunately, Sharleyan couldn’t come with him. He was just as glad to spare Alahnah the roughness and potential hazards of this particular winter voyage, but that wasn’t the main reason she and her mother had remained in Cherayth. Nor was it the reason Merlin had remained with them. Sharleyan would be making a voyage of her own soon enough, and Cayleb didn’t envy the task she was going to face at the end of it.

Well, no one ever told you it was going to be easy… or pleasant, he reminded himself. So stop thinking about how much you envy Nahrmahn and Ohlyvya for at least being together and concentrate on getting your job done. Sharley will handle her part of it just fine, and the sooner she does, the sooner she will be joining you.

“I agree things could be a lot worse,” he said in a deliberately more cheerful tone, then smiled wickedly. “For example, I could be just as bad a sailor as Nahrmahn!” .

The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands

And aren’t we four poor miserable looking sons-of-bitches for the most powerful men in the world? Vicar Rhobair Duchairn thought sourly, gazing around the conference chamber. None of the other faces were gazing back at him at the moment, and all of them wore expressions which mingled various degrees of shock, dismay, and anger.

The atmosphere in the sumptuously furnished, indirectly lit, mystically comfortable chamber was like an echo of the bitter blizzard even then blowing through the streets of Zion beyond the Temple’s precincts. Not surprisingly, given the message they’d just received… and the fact that it had taken so long to reach them. Poor visibility was the greatest weakness of the Church’s semaphore system, and this winter’s weather seemed to be proving worse than usual. It certainly was in Zion itself, as Duchairn was all too well aware. His efforts to provide the city’s poor and homeless with enough warmth and food to survive had saved scores-if not hundreds-of lives so far, yet the worst was yet to come and he knew he wasn’t going to save all of them.

At least this year, though, Mother Church was actually trying to honor her obligation to succor the weakest and most vulnerable of God’s children. And seeing that she did was eating up a lot of Duchairn’s time. It was also taking him beyond the Temple far more frequently than any of his colleagues managed, and he suspected it was giving him a far better perspective on how the citizens of Zion really felt about Mother Church’s jihad. Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s inquisitors circulated throughout the city and Clyntahn had access to all of their reports, but Duchairn doubted the Grand Inquisitor paid a great deal of attention to what Zion’s poorest inhabitants were saying. Duchairn’s own activities brought him into much more frequent contact with those same poor, however, and at least some of what they truly felt had to leak through the deference and (much as it distressed him to admit it existed) the fear his high clerical rank inspired. He might have learned still more if he hadn’t been continually accompanied by his assigned escort of Temple Guardsmen, but that was out of the question.

Which says some pretty ugly things about how our beloved subjects regard us, doesn’t it, Rhobair? He felt his lips trying to twist in a bitter smile at the irony of it all. All he really wanted to do was reach out to the people of Zion the way a vicar of God was supposed to, yet trying to do that without bodyguards was entirely too likely to get him killed by some of those same people. And it would make sense from their perspective, I suppose. I don’t imagine some of them are differentiating very much among us just now, and given Zhaspahr’s idea of how to inspire obedience, somebody probably would put a knife in my ribs if only he had the chance. Not that there’s any way Allayn and Zhaspahr would let me out without my keepers even if everyone loved and cherished all four of us as much as Charis seems to cherish Staynair.

Duchairn knew perfectly well why Allayn Maigwair and Zhaspahr Clyntahn regarded Captain Khanstahnzo Phandys as the perfect man to command his bodyguard… and keep an alert eye on his activities. As the officer who’d thwarted the Wylsynn brothers’ escape from the Inquisition-and personally killed Hauwerd Wylsynn when the “renegade” vicar resisted arrest-his reliability was beyond question.

Of course, these days things like reliability and loyalty were almost as subject to change as Zion’s weather, weren’t they? And not just where members of the Guard were concerned. All he had to do was glance at the ugly look Clyntahn was bending upon Maigwair to realize that.

“Tell me, Allayn,” Clyntahn said now. “Can you and the Guard do anything right?”

Maigwair flushed darkly and started to open his mouth quickly. But then he stopped, pressing his lips together, and Duchairn felt a spasm of sympathy. As the Captain General of the Church of God Awaiting, Maigwair commanded all of her armed forces except the small, elite armed cadre of the Inquisition. That had made him responsible for building, arming, and training the Navy of God, and it had been commanded by Guard officers on its voyage to Desnair.

A voyage which, as the dispatch which had occasioned this meeting made clear, had not prospered.

“I think that might be a bit overly severe, Zhaspahr,” Duchairn heard himself say, and the Grand Inquisitor turned his baleful gaze upon him. Clyntahn’s heavy jowls were dark with anger, and despite himself, Duchairn felt a quiver of fear as those fuming eyes came to bear.

“Why?” the inquisitor demanded in a harsh, ugly tone. “They’ve obviously fucked up by the numbers… again.”

“If Father Greyghor’s dispatch is accurate, and we have no reason yet to believe it isn’t, Bishop Kornylys clearly encountered a new and unexpected Charisian weapon… again.” Duchairn kept his voice deliberately level and nonconfrontational, although he saw Clyntahn’s eyes narrow angrily at the deliberate mimicry of his last two words. “If that weapon was as destructive as Father Greyghor’s message suggests, it’s hardly surprising the Bishop suffered a major defeat.”

“Major defeat,” he thought. My, what a delicate way to describe what must’ve been a massacre. It seems I have a gift for words after all.

The fact that Father Greyghor Searose, the commanding officer of the galleon NGS Saint Styvyn, appeared to be the senior surviving officer of Bishop Kornylys Harpahr’s entire fleet-that not a single squadron commander seemed to have made it to safety-implied all sorts of things Duchairn really didn’t want to think about. According to Searose’s semaphore dispatch, only seven other ships had survived to join Saint Styvyn in Bedard Bay. Seven out of a hundred and thirty. The fact that they’d been anticipating a very different message for five-days-the notification that Harpahr had reached his destination and united his forces and the Imperial Desnairian Navy into an irresistible armada-had only made the shock of the message they’d actually gotten even worse. No wonder Clyntahn’s nose was out of joint… especially since he was the one who’d insisted on sending them to the Gulf of Jahras in the first place instead of to Earl Thirsk in Gorath Bay.

“Rhobair has a point, Zhaspahr,” Zahmsyn Trynair put in quietly, and it was the inquisitor’s turn to glare at the Church’s Chancellor, the final member of the Group of Four. “I’m not saying things were handled perfectly,” Trynair continued. “But if the Charisians somehow managed to actually make our ships explode in action, it’s scarcely surprising we lost the battle. For that matter,” the Chancellor’s expression was that of a worried man, “I don’t know how the people are going to react when they hear about exploding ships at sea! Langhorne only knows what Shan-wei-spawned deviltry was involved in that! ”

“There wasn’t any ‘deviltry’ involved!” Clyntahn snapped. “It was probably-”

He broke off with an angry chop of his right hand, and Duchairn wondered what he’d been about to say. Virtually all of Mother Church’s spies reported to the Grand Inquisitor. Was it possible Clyntahn had received some warning of the new weapon… and failed to pass it on to Maigwair?

“I don’t think it was deviltry, either, Zhasphar,” he said mildly. “Zahmsyn has a point about how others may see it, however, including quite a few vicars. So how do we convince them it wasn’t?”

“First, by pointing out that the Writ clearly establishes that Shan-wei’s arts cannot prevail against godly and faithful men, far less a fleet sent out in God’s own name to fight His jihad!” Clyntahn shot back. “And, secondly, by pointing out that nothing else these goddamned heretics have trotted out has amounted to actual witchcraft or deviltry. Pressing and twisting the limits of the Proscriptions till they squeal, yes, but so far all of it’s been things our own artisans can duplicate without placing ourselves in Shan-wei’s talons!”

That was an interesting change in perspective on Clyntahn’s part, Duchairn thought. It had probably been brewing ever since the inquisitor decided Mother Church had no choice but to adopt the Charisians’ innovations themselves if they hoped to defeat the heretics. Odd how the line between the acceptable and the anathematized started blurring as soon as Clyntahn realized the kingdom he’d wanted to murder might actually have a chance to win.

“Very well, I’ll accept that,” Trynair responded, although from his tone he still cherished a few reservations. “Convincing the common folk of it may be a little more difficult, however. And ‘deviltry’ or not, the shock of it-not to mention its obvious destructiveness-undoubtedly explains how Bishop Kornylys and his warriors were overcome.”

“I think that’s almost certainly what happened.” Maigwair’s voice was unwontedly quiet. The Group of Four’s least imaginative member clearly realized how thin the ice was underfoot, but his expression was stubborn. “There’s no way Harpahr could have seen this coming. We certainly didn’t! And, frankly, I’m willing to bet the Harchongese got in the way more than they ever helped!”

Clyntahn’s glare grew still sharper. The Harchong Empire’s monolithic loyalty to Mother Church loomed large in the Grand Inquisitor’s thinking. Harchong, the most populous of all the Safeholdian realms, formed an almost bottomless reservoir of manpower upon which the Church might draw and, geographically, it protected the Temple Lands’ western flank. Perhaps even more important from Clyntahn’s perspective, though, was Harchong’s automatic, bone-deep aversion to the sort of innovations and social change which had made Charis so threatening in the Inquisition’s eyes from the very beginning.

Despite which, not even he could pretend Harchong’s contribution to Bishop Kornylys Harpahr’s fleet had constituted anything but a handicap. Poorly manned, worse officered, and in far too many cases completely unarmed thanks to the inefficiency of Harchong’s foundries, they must have been like an anchor tied to Harpahr’s ankle when the Charisians swooped down upon him.

“I get a little tired of hearing about Harchong’s shortcomings,” the Grand Inquisitor said sharply. “I’ll grant they aren’t the best seamen in the world, but at least we can count on them… unlike some people I could mention.” He made a harsh, angry sound deep in his throat. “Funny how Searose ended up in Siddarmark of all damned places, isn’t it?”

Duchairn managed not to roll his eyes, but he’d seen that one coming. Clyntahn’s aversion towards and suspicion of Siddarmark were just as deep and automatic as his preference for Harchong.

“I’m sure it was simply a case of Bedard Bay’s being the closest safe port he could reach,” Trynair said.

“Maybe so, but I’d almost be happier to see them on the bottom of the sea,” the inquisitor growled. “The last thing we need is to have our Navy-our surviving Navy, I suppose I should say-getting contaminated by those bastards. The embargo’s leaking like a fucking sieve already; Langhorne only knows how bad it’d get if the people responsible for enforcing it signed on with that pain in the ass Stohnar!”

“Zhaspahr, you know I agree we have to be cautious where Siddarmark is concerned,” the Chancellor said in a careful tone. “And I realize Stohnar is obviously conniving with his own merchants and banking houses to evade the embargo. But Rhobair’s right, too. At this moment, Siddarmark and Silkiah have the most prosperous economies of any of the mainland realms precisely because the embargo is ‘leaking like a sieve’ in their cases. You know that’s true.”

“So we should just sit on our asses and let Stohnar and the others laugh up their sleeves at Mother Church?” Clyntahn challenged harshly. “Let them flout Mother Church’s legitimate authority in the middle of the first true jihad in history and get rich out of it?!”

“Do you think I like that any better than you do?” Trynair demanded. “But we’ve already got one slash lizard by the tail. One war at a time, please, Zhaspahr! And if it’s all the same to you, I’d really like to take care of the one we’re already fighting before we start another one with Siddarmark.”

Clyntahn scowled, and Duchairn heaved a mental sigh. The Church had already lost the tithes from the scattered lands which had joined or been conquered by the Empire of Charis. That was a not insignificant slice of revenue in its own right, but of all the mainland realms, only the Republic of Siddarmark, the Grand Duchy of Silkiah, and the Desnairian Empire were managing to pay anything like their prewar tithes, and it was questionable how much longer that would be true in Desnair’s case.

The only reason the Empire was making ends meet was the depth and richness of its gold mines, and that gold was running like water as the rest of the Desnairian economy slowed drastically. The result was a drastic rise in prices which was crushing the poor and the limited Desnairian middle class, and in the end, far more of the total tithe came from those two classes than from the aristocracy. If they could no longer make ends meet, if their incomes dropped, then so did their ability to pay their tithes, and Duchairn could already see the downward spiral starting to set in.

All of that made the fact that the Republic and the Grand Duchy were able to pay their full prewar tithes even more important. And the reason they were, as Trynair had just reminded Clyntahn, was precisely because they were the only two mainland realms continuing to carry on a brisk trade with Charis. In fact, even though the total level of their trade had dropped significantly because of the need to evade Clyntahn’s prohibition of any commerce with Charis, Siddarmark in particular was actually more prosperous than it had been three years ago.

Everybody knows Siddarmark’s always been the main conduit between Charis and the Temple Lands, whether Zhaspahr wants to admit it or not , the Treasurer thought disgustedly. Their farmers have been cleaning up out of the need to provision all our armed forces, of course, but now that Charisian goods can’t be imported legally into the Temple Lands-thanks to Zhaspahr’s stupid embargo-Siddarmark’s merchants and banking houses are making even more on the transaction. And it’s still costing us less to buy Charisian than to buy anything manufactured here on the mainland. So if we break the Siddarmarkian economy, we break our own!

He knew how much the situation infuriated Clyntahn, but for once the Grand Inquisitor had faced the united opposition of all three of his colleagues. They simply couldn’t afford to kill the wyvern that fetched the golden rabbit-not when Mother Church was pouring so much gold into building the weapons she needed to fight her jihad. That was the argument which had finally brought him-grudgingly, dragging his heels the whole way-into accepting that he had no choice but to close his eyes to the systematic violation of his embargo.

And the fact that it’s his embargo, one he insisted on decreeing without any precedent, only pisses him off worse, Duchairn thought. Bad enough that they should defy God’s will, but Langhorne forbid they should dare to challenge Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s will!

“I think we need to turn our attention back to the matter at hand,” he said before Clyntahn could fire back at Trynair and back himself still further into an untenable corner. “And while I know none of us wanted to hear about any of this, I’d like to point out that all we have so far is Father Greyghor’s preliminary semaphore report. Reports over the semaphore are never as detailed as couriered or wyvern-carried reports. I’m sure he dispatched a courier at the same time he handed his preliminary message to the semaphore clerks, but it’s not going to get here for a while, given the weather, so I think it’s probably a bit early for us to be trying to decide exactly what happened, or how, or who’s to blame for it. There’ll be time enough for that once we know more.”

For a moment, he expected Clyntahn to launch a fresh verbal assault. But then the other man made himself inhale deeply. He nodded once, curtly, and thrust himself back in his chair.

“That much I’ll give you,” he said grudgingly. “If it does turn out, though, that all this resulted from someone’s carelessness or stupidity, there will be consequences.”

He wasn’t looking at Maigwair as he spoke, but Duchairn saw the Captain General’s eyes flicker with an anger of their own. It was just like Clyntahn to conveniently misremember who’d originally come up with a plan that hadn’t worked out. The frightening thing, as far as Duchairn was concerned, was that he was almost certain the Grand Inquisitor honestly did remember things the way he described them. Not at first, perhaps, but given even a little time he could genuinely convince himself the truth was what he wanted the truth to be.

Which is how we all got into this mess in the first place, the Treasurer thought bitterly. Well, that and the fact that not one of the rest of us had the guts, the gumption, or the mother wit to recognize where all four of us were headed and drag the fool to a stop .

“Something we are going to have to think about, and quickly, though,” he continued out loud, “are the consequences of what’s happened. The purely military consequences are beyond my purview, I’m afraid. The fiscal consequences, however, fall squarely into my lap, and they’re going to be ugly.”

Trynair looked glum, Maigwair looked worried, and Clyntahn looked irritated, but none of them disagreed with him.

“We poured literally millions of marks into building those ships,” Duchairn continued unflinchingly. “Now that entire investment’s gone. Worse, I think we have to assume that at least a great many of the ships we’ve lost will be taken into Charisian service. Not only are we confronted with the need to replace our own losses, but we’ve just given the Charisians the equivalent of all that money in the hulls they’re not going to have to build and the guns they’re not going to have to cast after all. We still have the Desnairian and Dohlaran navies, but if the Charisians can find the crews to man all the galleons they have now, they’ll have a crushing advantage over Desnair or Dohlar in isolation. In fact, they’ll probably outnumber all our forces combined, even if we include our own unfinished construction and the ships Harchong hasn’t finished yet. Frankly, I’m not at all sure we can recover from that position anytime soon.”

“Then you’ll just have to find a way for us to do it anyway,” Clyntahn said flatly. “We can’t get at the bastards without a fleet, and I think it’s just become obvious we’re going to need an even bigger fleet than we thought we did.”

“It’s easy to say ‘find a way to do it anyway,’ Zhaspahr,” Duchairn replied. “Actually accomplishing it is a bit more difficult. I’m Mother Church’s Treasurer. I know how deeply we’ve dipped into our reserves, and I know how our revenue stream’s suffered since we’ve lost all tithes from Charis, Emerald, Chisholm, and now Corisande and Tarot.” He carefully refrained from mentioning the subsequent importance of any places with names like Siddarmark or Silkiah. “I won’t go so far as to say our coffers are empty, but I will say I can see their bottoms entirely too clearly. We don’t have the funds to replace even what we’ve just lost, far less build ‘an even bigger fleet.’”

“If we can’t build a big enough fleet, Mother Church loses everything, ” Clyntahn shot back. “Do you want to face God and explain that we were too busy pinching coins to find the marks to save His Church from heresy, blasphemy, and apostasy?”

“No, I don’t.” And I don’t want to face the Inquisition because that’s what you think I’m doing, either, Zhaspahr. “On the other hand, I can’t simply wave my hands and magically refill the treasury.”

“Surely you’ve been thinking about this contingency for some time, though, Rhobair?” Trynair put in in a pacific tone. “I know you like to be beforehand in solving problems, and you must’ve seen this one coming for some time.”

“Of course I have. In fact, I’ve been mentioning it to all of you at regular intervals,” Duchairn observed a bit tartly. “And I do see a few things we can do-none of which, unfortunately, are going to be pleasant. One thing, I’m afraid, is that we may find ourselves borrowing money from secular lords and secular banks instead of the other way round.”

Trynair grimaced, and Maigwair looked acutely unhappy. Loans to secular princes and nobles were one of Mother Church’s most effective means of keeping them compliant. Clearly, neither of them looked forward to finding that shoe on the other foot. Clyntahn’s set, determined expression never wavered, however.

“You said that was one thing,” Trynair said. “What other options have you been considering?”

He clearly hoped for something less extreme, but Duchairn shook his head almost gently.

“Zahmsyn, that’s the least painful option open to us, and we’re probably going to have to do it anyway, no matter what other avenues we turn to.”

“Surely you’re not serious!” Trynair protested.

“Zahmsyn, I’m telling you we’ve spent millions on the fleet. Millions. Just to give you an idea what I’m talking about, each of those galleons cost us around two hundred and seventy thousand marks. That’s for the ships we built here in the Temple Lands; the ones we built in Harchong cost Mother Church well over three hundred thousand apiece, once we got finished paying all the graft that got loaded into the price.”

He saw Clyntahn’s eyes flash at the reference to Harchongese corruption, but there was no point trying to ignore ugly realities, and he went on grimly.

“Dohlaran and Desnairian-built ships come in somewhere between the two extremes, and that price doesn’t include the guns. For one of our fifty-gun galleons, the artillery would add roughly another twenty thousand marks, so we might as well call it three hundred thousand a ship by the time we add powder, shot, muskets, cutlasses, boarding pikes, provisions, and all the other ‘incidentals.’ Again, those are the numbers for the ships we built right here, not for Harchong or one of the other realms, and between our Navy and Harchong’s we’ve just lost somewhere around a hundred and thirty ships. That’s the next best thing to forty million marks just for the ships, Zahmsyn, and don’t forget that we’ve actually paid for building or converting over four hundred ships, including the ones we’ve lost. That puts Mother Church’s total investment in them up to at least a hundred and twenty million marks, and bad as that number is, it doesn’t even begin to count the full cost, because it doesn’t allow for building the shipyards and foundries to build and arm them in the first place. It doesn’t count workers’ wages, the costs of assembling work forces, paying the crews, buying extra canvas for sails, building ropeworks, buying replacement spars. And it also doesn’t count all the jihad’s other expenses, like subsidies to help build the secular realms’ armies, the interest we’ve forgiven on Rahnyld of Dohlar’s loans, or dozens of others my clerks could list for us.”

He paused to let those numbers sink in and saw shock on Trynair’s face. Maigwair looked even more unhappy but much less surprised than the Chancellor. Of course, he’d had to live with those figures from the very beginning, but Duchairn found himself wondering if Trynair had ever really looked at them at all. And even Maigwair’s awareness was probably more theoretical than real. No vicar had any real experience of what those kinds of numbers would have meant to someone in the real world, where a Siddarmarkian coal miner earned no more than a mark a day and even a skilled worker, like one of their own ship carpenters, earned no more than a mark and a half.

“We’ve had to come up with all that money,” he continued after a moment, “and so far we’ve managed to. But at the same time, we’ve had to meet all Mother Church’s other fiscal needs, and they haven’t magically vanished. There’s a limit to the cuts we can make in other areas in order to pay for our military buildup, and all of them together aren’t going to come even close to making up the shortfall in our revenues. Not the way our finances are currently structured.”

“So what do we do to change that structure?” Clyntahn demanded flatly.

“First, I’m afraid,” Duchairn said, “we’re going to have to impose direct taxation on the Temple Lands.”

Clyntahn’s face tightened further, and Trynair’s eyes widened in alarm. The Knights of the Temple Lands, the secular rulers of the Temple Lands, were also the vicars of Mother Church. They’d never paid a single mark of taxes, and the mere threat of having to do so now could be guaranteed to create all manner of resentment. Their subjects were supposed to pay taxes to them, plus their tithes to Mother Church; they weren’t supposed to pay taxes to anyone.

“They’ll scream bloody murder!” Trynair protested.

“No,” Clyntahn said harshly. “They won’t.”

The Chancellor had been about to say something more. Now he closed his mouth and looked at the Grand Inquisitor, instead.

“You were saying, Rhobair?” Clyntahn prompted, not giving Trynair so much as a glance.

“I think it’s entirely possible we’re going to have to begin disposing of some of Mother Church’s property, as well.” The Treasurer shrugged. “I don’t like the thought, but Mother Church and the various orders have extensive holdings all over both Havens and Howard.” In fact, as all four of them knew, the Church of God Awaiting was the biggest landholder in the entire world… by a huge margin. “We should be able to raise quite a lot of money without ever touching her main holdings in the Temple Lands.”

Trynair looked almost as distressed by that notion as by the idea of taxing the Knights of the Temple Lands, but once again Clyntahn’s expression didn’t even waver.

“I’m sure you’re not done with the bad-tasting medicine yet, Rhobair. Spit it out,” he said.

“I’ve already warned all of our archbishops to anticipate an increase in their archbishoprics’ tithes,” Duchairn replied flatly. “At this time, it looks to me as if we’ll have to raise them at a minimum from twenty percent to twenty-five percent. It may go all the way to thirty in the end.”

That disturbed Trynair and Maigwair less than any of his other proposals, he noted, despite the severe impact it was going to have on the people being forced to pay those increased tithes. Clyntahn, on the other hand, seemed as impervious to its implications as he’d been to all the others.

“Those are all ways to raise money,” he observed. “What about ways to save money?”

“There aren’t a lot more of those available to us without cutting unacceptably into core expenditures.” Duchairn met Clyntahn’s eyes levelly across the conference table. “I’ve already drastically reduced subsidies to all of the orders, cut back on our classroom support for the teaching orders, and cut funding for the Pasqualate hospitals by ten percent.”

“And you could save even more by cutting funding for Thirsk’s precious ‘pensions,’” Clyntahn grated. “Or by stopping coddling people too lazy to work for a living right here in Zion itself!”

“Mother Church committed herself to pay those pensions,” Duchairn replied unflinchingly. “If we simply decide we’re not going to after all, why should anyone trust us to meet any of our other obligations? And what effect do you think our decision not to provide for the widows and orphans of men who’ve died in Mother Church’s service after we’ve promised to would have on the loyalty of the rest of Mother Church’s sons and daughters, Zhaspahr? I realize you’re the Grand Inquisitor, and I’ll defer to your judgment if you insist, but that decision would strike at the very things all godly men hold most dear in this world: their responsibilities to their families and loved ones. If you threaten that, you undermine everything they hold fast to not simply in this world, but in the next.”

Clyntahn’s jaw muscles bunched, but Duchairn went on in that same level, steady voice.

“As for my ‘coddling people too lazy to work,’ this is something you and I have already discussed. Mother Church has a responsibility to look after her children, and it’s one we’ve ignored far too long. Every single mark I’ve spent here in Zion this winter-every mark I might spend here next winter, or the winter after that-would be a single drop of water in the Great Western Ocean compared to the costs of this jihad. It’s going to get lost in the bookkeeping when my clerks round their accounts, Zhaspahr. That’s how insignificant it is compared to all our other expenses. And I’ve been out there, out in the city. I’ve seen how people are reacting to the shelters and soup kitchens. I’m sure your own inquisitors have been reporting to you and Wyllym about that, as well. Do you really think the paltry sums we’re spending on that aren’t a worthwhile investment in terms of the city’s willingness to not simply endure but support what we’re demanding of them and their sons and husbands and fathers?”

Their gazes locked, and tension hovered like smoke in the chamber’s corners. For a moment, Duchairn thought Clyntahn’s rage was going to push him over the line they’d drawn a year ago, the compromise which had bought Duchairn’s acquiescence-his silence-where the Grand Inquisitor’s pogroms and punishments were concerned. In Clyntahn’s more reasonable moments, he probably did recognize it was necessary for the Church to show a kinder, more gentle face rather than relying solely on the Inquisition’s iron fist. That didn’t mean he liked it, though, and his resentment over the “diversion of resources” was exceeded only by his contempt for Duchairn’s weakness. For the Treasurer’s effort to salve his own conscience by showing his compassion to all the world.

If it came to an open confrontation between them, Duchairn knew exactly how badly it was going to end. There were some things he was no longer prepared to sacrifice, however, and after a moment, it was Clyntahn who looked away.

“Have it your own way,” he grunted, as if it were a matter of no importance, and Duchairn felt his taut nerves relax ever so slightly.

“I agree there’s no real point in cutting that small an amount out of our expenditures,” Trynair said. “But do you think we’ll be able to rebuild the fleet even if we do everything you’ve just described, Rhobair?”

“That’s really a better question for Allayn than for me. I know how much we’ve already spent. I can make some estimates about how much it will cost to replace what we’ve lost. The good news in that respect is that now that we’ve got an experienced labor force assembled and all the plans worked out, we can probably build new ships more cheaply than we built the first ones. But Allayn’s already been shifting the Guard’s funding from naval expenditures to army expenditures. I don’t see any way we’re going to be able to meet his projections for things like the new muskets and the new field artillery if we’re simultaneously going to have to rebuild the Navy.”

“Well, Allayn?” Clyntahn asked unpleasantly.

“This all came at me just as quickly and unexpectedly as it came at any of the rest of you, Zhaspahr,” Maigwair said in an unusually firm tone. “I’m going to have to look at the numbers, especially after we find out how accurate Searose’s estimate of our losses really is. It’s always possible they weren’t as great as he thinks they were. At any rate, until I have some hard figures, there’s no way to know how much rebuilding we’re actually going to have to do.

“Having said that, though, there’s no question that it’s going to be the next best thing to impossible to push the development of the Guard’s military support structure the way we originally planned. For one thing, field artillery’s going to be in direct competition with casting replacement naval artillery for any new construction. A lot of the artisans and craftsmen we’ll need to make rifled muskets and the new style bayonets are also going to be needed by the shipbuilding programs. As Rhobair says, we’ve planned all along on shifting emphasis once we got the shipbuilding program out of the way. In fact, I’d already started placing new orders and reassigning workers. Getting those workers back and shuffling the orders is going to be complicated.”

“Should we just shelve land armaments in favor of replacing our naval losses?” Trynair asked.

“I think that’s something we’re all going to have to think about,” Maigwair said. “My own feeling, bearing in mind that we don’t have those definite numbers I mentioned, is that we’ll have to cut back on the muskets and field artillery and shift a lot of emphasis back to the shipyards. I don’t think we’ll want to completely cancel the new programs, though. We need to at least make a start, and we need enough of the new weapons for the Guard to start training with them, learning their capabilities. Striking the balance between meeting that need and rebuilding the Navy is going to be tricky.”

“That actually makes sense,” Clyntahn said, as if the notion that anything coming out of Maigwair’s mouth might do that astounded him. “On the other hand,” he continued, ignoring the flash of anger in the Captain General’s eyes, “at least it’s not as if Cayleb and Sharleyan are going to be landing any armies on the mainland. Even adding the Chisholmian Army to the Charisians’ Marines and assuming every outrageous report about their new weapons is accurate, they’ve got far too few troops to confront us on our own ground. Especially not when they’ve got to keep such hefty garrisons in Zebediah and Corisande.”

“There’s something to that,” Maigwair conceded. “Doesn’t mean they won’t try hit-and-run raids, of course. They did that against Hektor in Corisande. And if they’re willing to start that kind of nonsense on the mainland, our problem’s going to be mobility, not manpower. They can simply move raiding parties around faster by ship than we can march them overland, and the sad truth is that it doesn’t really matter how good our weapons are if we can’t catch up with them in the first place. That’s one of the reasons I’m inclined to think we’re going to have to place more emphasis on ships than muskets for the immediate future. We need to have enough of a navy to at least force them to make major detachments from their own fleet to support any operations along our coasts.”

“And how realistic is that?” Clyntahn’s question was marginally less caustic. “We’re going to have to rebuild-there’s no question of that, if we’re ever going to take the war to them the way God demands-but how likely are we to be able to build enough of a replacement fleet quickly enough to keep them from raiding our coasts whenever they want?”

Maigwair’s unhappy expression was answer enough, but Duchairn shook his head.

“I think Allayn may be worrying a bit too much about that, for the moment at least,” he said. The others looked at him, and he shrugged. “They can probably raid the coast of Desnair if they really want to, but unless they go after one of the major ports-which would take more troops than they’re likely to have-simple raids aren’t likely to hurt us very much. The same is true of Delferahk.” Now, at least, he added silently. After all, Ferayd was the only “major port” Delferahk had, and it’s gone now… thanks to you and your inquisitors, Zhaspahr. “Dohlar is a long way from Charis and well protected, especially with Thirsk’s fleet still intact to hold the Gulf of Dohlar. And even though I know you’re not going to want to hear this, Zhaspahr, no one’s going to be raiding Siddarmark or Silkiah as long as both of them are trading with Charis.”

He paused, looking around their faces, then shrugged again.

“I agree we need to rebuild, but I also think we’ve got some time in hand before we’re really going to need a fleet for anything except offensive operations. Just manning all the ships they’ve got now is going to be a huge drain on their manpower. As you say, Zhaspahr, they aren’t going to be able to build an army large enough for any serious invasion of the mainland, so if their raids can only inconvenience us without really hurting us, I don’t see any need to panic over the situation. Yes, it’s serious, and we’re going to have our work cut out for us to recover from it, but it’s a long way from hopeless.”

“That’s sound reasoning,” Clyntahn said after a moment, bestowing a rare look of approval on the Treasurer.

“Agreed.” Trynair looked happier as well, and he nodded firmly. “Panic isn’t going to help us, but clear thinking may.”

“I agree, too,” Maigwair said. “Of course, one thing we’re going to have to do is figure out how this new weapon of theirs actually works. Until we know that and produce similar weapons of our own, meeting them at sea would be a recipe for disaster. And it’s probably going to have a lot of implications for battles on land, too, for that matter.” He looked at Clyntahn. “Do I have permission to begin work on that, Zhaspahr?”

“The Inquisition has no objection to your at least putting people to work thinking about it,” the Grand Inquisitor replied, his eyes opaque. “I’ll want to be kept closely informed, of course, and I’ll be assigning one or two of my inquisitors to keep an eye on things. But as I said before, our own artisans have been able to accomplish many of the same things the heretics have done without violating the Proscriptions. I’m not prepared to say they’ve managed it entirely without violations, but we have, and I’m sure we’ll be able to continue to do so.”

Oh, I’m sure we will, too, Duchairn thought even as he and the other two nodded in grave agreement. Your inquisitors are going to approve anything you tell them to, Zhaspahr, and you’ll tell them to approve whatever Allayn comes up with even if it smashes right through the Proscriptions. After all, who’s a mere Archangel like Jwo-jeng to place any limits on you when it comes to smiting your enemies? In God’s name, of course.

He wondered once again where all this madness was going to end. And, once again, he told himself the one thing he knew with absolute certainty.

Wherever it ended, it was going to get far, far worse before it got better.