Hell's Foundations Quiver (119 page)

“To Claw Island, My Lord.” Khapahr met the earl's eyes levelly. “I was assured they'd be unharmed. Of course, the Charisians might not have told
you
that. It was their belief you might be inclined to be … cooperative if you felt the safety of your daughters and your grandchildren depended upon it. When Bishop Staiphan told me Father Ahbsahlahn wanted to speak with you today, it occurred to me that the Inquisition might have gotten some hint of mine and Kartyr's intentions. I suspected they might be planning to move them to Zion or somewhere else in the Temple Lands, so I found myself forced to set my own plans in motion sooner than I'd intended. And apparently I wasn't quite careful enough when I left Lady Stefyny's. You did have me followed, didn't you, Father?”

He turned back to Suzhymahga, and the Schuelerite's jaw muscles clenched.

“You're a dead man,” he grated.

“No doubt. But I'm not the only one, Father. When you know that if you're captured you'll automatically be given to the Punishment, there's not much of an incentive to surrender. I won't pretend I wasn't in it mostly for the money, but I do take a certain pride in doing what I set out to do. So since I've failed to neutralize His Lordship one way, I'm afraid I'll have to do it another way.”

He looked Thirsk in the eye.

“I'm very sorry about this, My Lord,” he said quietly. “I've always deeply respected you.”

Thirsk looked back at him … and Khapahr squeezed the trigger.

The heavy bullet hammered the earl out of his chair in a crack of thunder. He fell heavily, and suddenly everything was in motion. Captain Baiket lunged up, dagger hissing out of its sheath. Both of the Temple Guardsmen reached for their own swords. Lieutenant Bahrdailahn flung himself out of his own chair, going to his knees beside the earl, ripping open Thirsk's tunic to get at the wound. And Ahlvyn Khapahr brought the revolver back around, smiled at Father Chermyn … and shot him squarely between the eyes.

The back of Suzhymahga's skull exploded, spraying blood and brain matter over the Temple Guardsmen behind him. One of them stopped, pawing at his eyes, but the other kept coming. Voices could be heard shouting in alarm from the deck above their heads. Feet came thundering down the companionway, and Khapahr put a bullet into the guardsman who hadn't been blinded by Suzhymahga's brains.

The wounded guardsman went down, screaming, and the cabin door smashed open. Mhartyn Rahlstyn charged through it, sword in hand, followed by
Chihiro
's senior Marine officer, and Khapahr darted back to the stern windows.

“Time to go,” he said, and his right temple disintegrated as he fired one last shot.

 

.VII.

Charisian Embassy, Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark

“My God.”

Cayleb Ahrmahk sat back in the armchair before the hearth in his embassy study, his face ashen, as the imagery from the SNARC's remote finished playing on his contact lenses. Outside the windows, a cold early-afternoon rain—not yet the bitter cold of winter, but enough to chill the bone and depress the heart—fell heavily, beating against the diamond-paned windows, and a coal fire hissed on the grate. It burned more for spiritual comfort than for physical, that fire.

It failed in its purpose.

“I never expected anything like that,” the Emperor of Charis said softly. “Not in a million years.”

“No one did, love,” Sharleyan told him from distant Tellesberg. “How could we have?”

“It was brilliant,” Aivah Pahrsahn said, almost as softly as Cayleb had spoken. “What a brilliant, brilliant young man.”

“May God gather him to Him as His own,” Maikel Staynair said quietly.

“I agree with you, Aivah—and with you, Maikel,” Nahrmahn Baytz put in from Nimue's Cave. “But will it work?”

“It almost has to work, at least to some extent,” Merlin said from the armchair facing Cayleb's. “Someone as smart as Rayno or as paranoid as Clyntahn may not buy it entirely, but they have to give it at least some credence.”

“I'm not sure Clyntahn will question it as deeply as you might be afraid, Nahrmahn.” Nimue Chwaeriau was the only member of the inner circle currently awake in Manchyr. Now she smiled crookedly as the others looked at her com image. “Clyntahn counts on the fanaticism of people like his Rakurai to work
for
him, but he doesn't really believe in the sincerity of anyone who
opposes
him. It's part of the same mind-set—if I can use the term ‘mind' in reference to him—which lets him recognize how threats to someone's loved ones can be used to keep her in line without fully appreciating—or worrying about—the ultimate consequences of how much pure, distilled hatred that generates.”

“You may have a point,” Merlin said after a moment. “Everything we've learned about Clyntahn only underscores his fundamental narcissism. He can believe people are prepared to die for
him
, but he doesn't really believe anyone could be prepared to die for someone
else
. Someone that person loves.”

“Rayno could believe that.” Aivah sounded thoughtful. “But, as Merlin says, you may have a point about Clyntahn, Nimue. He can accept it as an intellectual proposition, but emotionally, it just doesn't resonate with him. He's … pre-programmed—” she smiled briefly, fleetingly, as she used the very un-Safeholdian term “—to accept bribery and corruption as a motive before he even considers something remotely like selflessness. And when I said Khapahr was brilliant, I wasn't using the term lightly. He not only gave Clyntahn a motive he's naturally inclined to accept but managed to provide alibis for all the rest of Thirsk's personal staff with the same move.”

Merlin nodded, sapphire eyes dark as he thought about the decision Ahlvyn Khapahr had made.

Despite everything Owl and Nahrmahn could do, the sheer amount of data flowing in through the network of SNARCs—especially now that Owl was building additional remotes for them—continued to exceed their ability to process information. Since the cataclysmic events in HMS
Chihiro
's admiral's quarters, however, they'd been back over every scrap of imagery of Commander Khapahr in those enormous data files. They'd actually found the imagery of him quietly appropriating the revolver from the weapons captured aboard HMS
Dreadnought
. It was one of the smaller Navy pistols, chambered in .40 caliber rather than .45, with a shorter barrel for use in close quarters on shipboard and a somewhat lighter load. That was the only reason he'd been able to hide it under his tunic, and Merlin suspected that the fact that it could never be mistaken for anything but a
Charisian
-made weapon had been part of his thinking from the beginning. It was unlikely he'd planned from the outset to sacrifice himself, but he'd clearly recognized what would happen to him if he was taken alive. Once he'd realized the Inquisition was about to arrest him, whatever else happened, he'd deliberately diverted suspicion from Thirsk, and that revolver had been part of the evidence to “prove” he'd been suborned by Charis, not working to liberate his commander's family from Church custody.

They still hadn't found any imagery of the moment when Thirsk had taken Khapahr fully into his confidence. He doubted they ever would, at this remove. From what they'd observed of Thirsk and Khapahr, it was entirely likely that Khapahr had been proceeding independently of any instructions from the earl. Cutting Thirsk out of the direct planning was one way to reduce the risk of detection by the inevitable spies keeping the earl under the Inquisition's eye. Yet it was virtually certain Stywyrt Baiket, Ahbail Bahrdailahn, and probably Mahrtyn Vahnwyk had been at least peripherally privy to what Khapahr was doing. One clue in that direction was the fact that Baiket's hand had been nowhere near his dagger hilt when Khapahr threatened him. Bahrdailahn's obvious nervousness from the very beginning might be another indication … but it might not, as well.

They may not have known a thing about it, really, whatever we thought earlier. Khapahr must have known suspicion would fall on the rest of Thirsk's most trusted subordinates if he was caught, however “innocent” they might be. And Aivah's right about how smart he was. He might very well have been operating in just-in-case mode where they were concerned
.

“It took a lot of nerve to shoot Thirsk,” Cayleb said. “He could easily've killed him himself!”

“It took a lot of nerve to do
any
of that, and especially to do it so well,” Nimue countered. “For that matter, it took a lot of nerve for Thirsk to stand still and
let
himself be shot, and it's obvious that's exactly what he did. He never even flinched when Khapahr squeezed the trigger.”

“Agreed.” Cayleb nodded. “I wonder if the surgeons will be able to save the use of his arm?”

“Speaking from personal experience, I think they've got a chance,” Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk said. He sat on
Destiny
's sternwalk, tipped back in his chair with both boot heels propped on the top of the railing while he watched the sun set beyond Cape Samuel. “Not a very good one, I'm afraid, but a chance.”

On balance, Merlin suspected Hektor was probably correct. The bullet had struck Thirsk in the bony part of the left shoulder, mushroomed, and partially disintegrated. The main body of the bullet had punched a ragged hole through the scapula, shattered the clavicle, and fractured the first rib on that side, while lead fragments had broken the
second
rib and badly damaged the coracoid process, as well. The earl was fortunate Bahrdailahn had gotten pressure on the wound quickly enough to slow the bleeding until
Chihiro
's healer could arrive. He was also fortunate that despite the rote nature of their training, the supernatural explanation of physical processes, and the total absence of the sort of medical technology the Federation—or even pre-space Old Earth—had taken for granted, Pasqualate surgeons were very good.

“But the severity of the wound should make it obvious Khapahr truly was trying to kill him,” Aivah pointed out.

“As long as someone doesn't ask why he shot the Earl through the body and that bastard Suzhymahga through the
head
,” Nahrmahn agreed. “If he could manage a head shot when Suzhymahga was coming at him and everyone else was in motion, why couldn't he do the same thing with Thirsk, when everyone—including Thirsk—was still simply standing there?”

“He shot the Temple Guardsman in the
leg
, Nahrmahn,” Merlin observed. “I think the hits are broadly enough distributed to deflect that sort of question.”

“I hope so,” Nimue said. “And I think you're probably right, but it wouldn't do for anyone to figure out he deliberately
didn't
kill the guardsman, either.”

“I wonder if he killed Suzhymahga because he was more worried about him going over the entire conversation later and picking out flaws or because he was just really, really pissed at him?” Kynt Clareyk murmured from his office in the comfortable winter barracks being thrown up just outside the town of Lakeside on the northeast shore of Lake Isyk.

“I wouldn't put it past him to have done it for your first reason,” Aivah said. “He left both of the guardsmen as witnesses—witnesses the Inquisition's going to have to take seriously—but much as I'd always loathed Suzhymahga, he was smarter than both of them put together. Khapahr led him to the conclusions he wanted him to draw and actually got him to put them into words for the guardsmen, then got rid of him before he had a chance to question his own conclusions.” She shook her head. “
God
, that young man was brilliant.”

“And the most loyal friend anyone could ever ask for,” Sharleyan agreed softly.

Silence hovered for several seconds. Then Cayleb shook himself.

“So the question now is what Clyntahn does next. Any ideas?”

“I'd like to say I think it will cause him to decide Thirsk is actually trustworthy from his perspective,” Merlin said after a moment. “Unfortunately, what I
actually
think is that that's about as likely as the sun rising in the west tomorrow morning.”

“Probably.” Nimue sat in the lotus position on her bed in her darkened Manchyr bedchamber and nodded. “I'd say it's likely to have diverted
immediate
suspicion from him—suspicion that he was actively trying to get his family out of Church custody, at least—but it's not going to change Clyntahn's fundamental distrust. And let's be honest here. All the indications are that Clyntahn's absolutely right to fear what will happen if and when he finally pushes Thirsk to the breaking point. Best possible outcome from
Clyntahn's
perspective is that when the earl reaches that point he kills himself as the only escape that might leave his family unharmed. But I think it's pretty clear Clyntahn's figured out Thirsk won't oblige him that way
unless
it's the only escape that leaves his family unharmed.”

“Nimue's right,” Aivah said. “He'll still want Thirsk's family under his thumb in Zion as the one lever he can be certain will keep Thirsk under control. And the one downside of Commander Khapahr's strategy—aside from the absolute tragedy of losing
him
that way, I mean—is that it gives Clyntahn a pretext to move quickly to
get
them to Zion.”

“The ‘terrorist threat,' you mean?”

“Exactly, Merlin.” Aivah nodded. “Everyone will know it's bogus, that Khapahr the ‘Charisian spy' manufactured it out of whole cloth as a pretext for maneuvering Thirsk's daughters and sons-in-law into a position which would let him and his accomplices ‘kidnap them' for us. But it's still there on the table, and Clyntahn and Rayno are going to pounce on it the instant they read Kharmych's analysis of the witnesses' testimony.”