Hell's Foundations Quiver (102 page)

“I suppose I should be relieved you haven't already been instructed to send me to Zion, My Lord,” he said after a moment.

“Perhaps you should be,” Maik agreed. “I can't be positive, of course, but I suspect someone had to talk very fast to convince Clyntahn not to do just that.”

“And why should anyone bother to do that?” Thirsk couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice. In fact, he didn't try very hard, and Maik sighed.

“Probably not because they love you so much,” he said. “If I had to guess, somebody pointed out that your Navy's won the Jihad's only victory since the heretics demolished the Guarnak-Ice Ash Canal and stopped the Army of God's advance across Siddarmark in its tracks. You may not fully appreciate just how much of a hero—a talisman of victory—that's made you with the Faithful, but I assure you other people do. Mother Church's children have been desperate for some sort of good news; your Navy gave it to them.

“Admiral Rohsail and Admiral Raisahndo get much of the credit, of course—and rightly so. But you're the man who reorganized the Navy, built the fleet, and trained the men Rohsail and Raisahndo used, and
your
Navy is the only one to have
twice
defeated Charisian squadrons in battle. My guess is that someone—probably someone on the Council of Vicars itself—pointed out to Clyntahn that delivering the man who made that possible to the Punishment might have … negative consequences for the morale of Mother Church's loyal supporters. In fact,” Maik looked at him very levelly, “it might make some of those Faithful question who truly ordered it … and what his
personal
motives might be.”

Thirsk snorted harshly. He pushed himself up out of his chair and stalked across to the stern windows, gazing out them at the lights of Gorath. They looked so pure, so innocent, from here. But he knew the truth, knew he would never feel clean again if he simply stood there and let this happen.

Yet he also knew Maik was right. In fact, however accurate the auxiliary bishop's analysis might be at this instance, he himself was almost certainly the only reason Thirsk hadn't been summoned to Zion to face the Inquisition long since. A part of him almost wished he had been, since it would have taken the burden from him. Only they wouldn't have summoned him alone; Zhaspahr Clyntahn's Inquisition had made its theory of “collective responsibility” only too clear.

Strange
, he thought, sipping whiskey as he gazed at those distant lights. The thick, liquid fire rolled over his tongue and down his throat, and he shook his head.
Strange to think that somehow my people and I have become the one bright spot in the darkness. How did we ever come to this? And can God
truly
care about His plan if he lets this happen in His world? What have we
done?
How have we made Him so
angry
that He leaves us in this abyss? Lets someone like Zhaspahr Clyntahn rip away our honor, shred it like garbage? Trample on what the
Writ
itself tells me to do? And what am
I
to do about it?
Tell
me that, God! Surely You can tell me
that
much!

But God was silent, and Thirsk threw back another swallow of whiskey while he cursed the day of his own birth.

*   *   *

Dialydd Mab sat quietly on the rock outcrop near the crest of the hill.

That hill rose above the bridge on which the Selykr-Glydahr High Road crossed the North Daivyn River, seventy miles east of Selkyr, and he'd been waiting patiently there for almost six hours. He'd waited the better part of two days for the proper combination of weather and location, however; he didn't begrudge a few more hours.

It was raining again, hard enough to cut visibility significantly, and thunder muttered as distant lightning illuminated the bellies of the clouds. It wouldn't be long now, he thought, watching the take from the SNARCs. Another forty-five minutes—an hour, at the outside—before the encampment settled down enough for his purposes.

Nimue Chwaeriau had offered to join him, but he'd turned her down. He wasn't sure why he'd done that, really. Officially, he'd argued there was no point having two of the known
seijins
mysteriously out of sight at the same time, especially when he already had all the help he was likely to need. But both of them had known how weak
that
argument was. More probably, he'd decided, it was because he still felt compelled to protect his “younger sister” from all the ugliness with which
he'd
had to deal.

And maybe you just didn't want to
share,
either
, he told himself bitingly.
This is your private little crusade, isn't it? And how much of it—how much of
tonight,
right here—is because you had to sit and watch without doing anything about it for so damned long?

He didn't have a good answer for that question, but that didn't bother him as much as perhaps it ought to have. Maybe he should discuss that with Archbishop Maikel. The Bédardist was actually a very good psychiatrist, after all.

He checked the imagery again. No one had bothered to provide anything remotely like adequate tentage for the inmates being marched from Camp Tairek in Westmarch to the new camp prepared for them at Glydahr in the Princedom of Sardahn. They'd managed to throw together crude, leaky lean-tos for the weakest—and sickest—of their number, but most of them were huddled together in the rain, crowded around the smoky, raindrop-sputtering fires. Many of them had taken off their ragged clothing and used it to throw at least a fragile roof over the fire pits, but keeping those fires alight was a bitter struggle on a night like this.

He was, frankly, surprised the guards had permitted even that, but it hadn't really been left up to them. Major Lainyl Paxtyn, the commander of the guard detachment, was Zhaspahr Clyntahn's kind of officer. He'd invested his own sadism in the jihad, and he'd volunteered to march these prisoners to their new home. He'd also gone out of his way to make the journey a misery for them, and no doubt he would have ordered those fires extinguished in a heartbeat, if it had been his decision. And it was likely Father Trynt Dezmynd, the Schuelerite upper-priest in charge of the prisoner transfer and a man cut from very much the same cloth, would cheerfully have agreed with him … normally. But Father Zhames Symmyns, Dezmynd's assistant, had other ideas. A less brutal man by nature—and one who seemed to have taken Dialydd Mab's promises to heart—Symmyns had managed to mitigate the worst of Dezmynd and Lohgyn's natural inclinations, if only by convincing Father Trynt that their ecclesiastic superiors would frown on a march which killed two-thirds of the prisoners en route.

“Is this really going to be a good idea, Merlin?” a voice asked over the com.

“It can't hurt anything,” he growled back.

“It may not
help
anything, either,” Cayleb Ahrmahk pointed out. “You're seventy miles behind the Harchongians' front. Whatever you do to the guards, these people aren't going to be able to walk to safety. And not even you can guide nine thousand people, half of them sick and all of them malnourished, through the woods to our lines without being overhauled by
someone
.”

“That's not my object,” Mab said bleakly. “I know we can't get them out. That doesn't mean I can't give the guards a … pointed suggestion that they ought to at least treat them like human beings.”

There was an almost-sound over the com, as if Cayleb had begun a response and then stopped himself, and Mab smiled thinly. His mission tonight was probably as quixotic as Cayleb had suggested, but that didn't mean it wasn't worth doing. He would count it a bonus if the guards at the new camp were wise enough to learn from Major Paxtyn's example, yet he wasn't going to pretend he really expected that to happen. No, this had far more to do with Lainyl Paxtyn and the handful of particularly brutal noncoms and enlisted men he'd handpicked for this march.

It was a pity they wouldn't live long enough to learn from their own object lesson, but he could live with that.

“Do you think Clyntahn's likely to let Thirsk survive very much longer?” Cayleb asked in a rather different tone, and Mab's lips twitched at the emperor's obvious bid to change the subject.

“I think Bishop Staiphan's theory about the only reason Thirsk hasn't already been hauled to Zion was pretty close to spot on, actually,” he said. The SNARC permanently assigned to Lywys Gardynyr had caught the entire conversation. “And I very much doubt Zhaspahr Clyntahn's the least bit happy that someone whose loyalty he distrusts so profoundly is currently the Temple Loyalists' hero.” He shrugged. “If I were Thirsk, I'd be worrying about daggers in my back—especially if Clyntahn tries his favorite trick of blaming the assassination on
us
. And I'd for damned sure figure Clyntahn would be taking steps to get rid of me as soon as there's been a little time for my Kaudzhu Narrows' halo to wear off.”

“Do you think Thirsk's thinking the same way you would in his shoes?”

“I'm not sure. I know he's thinking
something
—Khapahr's activities've made that pretty clear. Kartyr may be one of Thirsk's spies, and Khapahr's the logical person to get any reports from him or tell him about any little missions the Navy needs him to undertake, but that's not what's going on here.”

“I'd have to agree,” Cayleb said. “I suppose it
could
be some sort of genuine clandestine operation for the Navy, but it sure doesn't
sound
like one.”

Mab nodded in the rainy darkness. Lazymyr Kartyr was a merchant captain, of sorts. The extraordinarily obese and self-indulgent sailor owned and commanded the twin-masted schooner
Mairee Zhain
, which had been caught running contraband—better than seventy thousand marks' worth of Chisholmian whiskeys and Charisian luxury goods—into Gorath in defiance of Zhaspahr Clyntahn's embargo and King Rhanyld's own decrees. The punishment for that was death, but Khapahr had convinced Thirsk and Staiphan Maik he would be more valuable as a live spy than as a dead smuggler. And, to be fair, he'd provided quite a bit of useful intelligence to the Royal Dohlaran Navy, courtesy of his contacts with his Chisholmian suppliers. He'd even inserted half a dozen Dohlaran spies and two agents inquisitor into Chisholm by sending them back up his chain of contacts. Of course, none of those spies or agents inquisitor had prospered after
reaching
Chisholm and the agents Sir Ahlber Zhustyn had had waiting for them, courtesy of warnings from the
seijin
network. In fact, four of them had been sending back information Zhustyn and First Councilor White Crag
wanted
Dohlar to have.

So, yes, there
could
be a legitimate reason for Khapahr to visit Kartyr and tell him to hold the
Mairee Zhain
in readiness for another, as yet undisclosed mission. Unfortunately, they had no idea what that mission might be. It was tempting to assume it must have something to do with getting Thirsk and/or his family out of Gorath, except that there was exactly zero evidence that Khapahr—or Thirsk—had ever said so much as a single word about any such possibility to any of the earl's daughters or either of his sons-in-law.

“Damn it!” Cayleb growled after a moment. “We
know
he's up to
something
, and we know it has to be for Thirsk! And we
still
don't have a clue what the two of them are planning. I just wish we'd had a SNARC on them when they organized whatever the hell it is they've organized! For that matter, I'd like to know how the hell they did it
without
our having a SNARC on them, given how carefully we've been monitoring Thirsk!”

“I've been thinking about that,” Mab said. “And it's occurred to me that we may have been coming at this the wrong way. I don't think
Thirsk's
organized anything with Khapahr; I think
Khapahr's
been doing all the organizing.”

“What?” Cayleb blinked in the imagery floating before Mab's eyes. “That's ridiculous!” he said, although there was a suddenly thoughtful edge in his voice. “Khapahr's his chief of staff—oh, I know he's not allowed to use the term, but that's what he is. Are you trying to tell me Commander Khapahr is slinking around—probably to organize the flight of his admiral's daughters and grandchildren—without Thirsk knowing anything about it? That's crazy, Merlin!”

“I didn't say that was what was happening, either,” Mab pointed out. “What I said is that Khapahr's been doing all the organizing. Nahrmahn and I—well, more Nahrmahn and Owl, even if I did help out—have been back over all the take from the SNARC monitoring Thirsk. We didn't realize Khapahr was up to anything until April, but Nahrmahn and Owl found a conversation between him and Thirsk from early March—you can have Owl play it for you later, if you like—which was very interesting. He and the Earl were eating supper together, and Thirsk looked across the table at him and said, ‘I used to take the girls for sails, you know, Ahlvyn. They always liked to pretend we were sailing to an exotic foreign land. I wish I had the time and opportunity to do that with them again, maybe even get the grandkids out on the Bay again.'”

“All right,” Cayleb said after a moment. “I admit it's an … interesting exchange, given what we think is going on now. But so what?”

“So Ahlvyn Khapahr is intensely loyal to Earl Thirsk, Cayleb,” Mab said very seriously. “And both he and Thirsk know the Inquisition has to be watching the Earl like cat-lizards stalking a spider rat. I think he understood exactly what Thirsk was saying to him, and that he's been working at it on his own without any formal direction from the Earl. And I think Thirsk trusts him enough to leave that entirely in his hands, because both of them understand that the farther away from anything remotely like an escape plan Thirsk stays, the less likely anyone is to notice the planning is underway.”