Hell's Foundations Quiver (52 page)

“Which were an excellent accompaniment for the meal,” he said.

“I told you Sir Dunkyn had trained me properly, Mother,” Hektor said from his end of the table. “See how adroitly he recovered after your correction?”

“Stop picking on the Baron,” Irys said sternly, and poked her husband in the ribs. “He deserves much better treatment than that.”

“In fact, he does.” Sharleyan's voice was lower than it had been, almost solemn, and when Sarmouth turned back to her, her brown eyes were dark. “That's rather the point of tonight's dinner.”

Sarmouth's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and she nodded to him.

“The truth is, Sir Dunkyn,” she said, “that this isn't a purely social affair after all. Mind you, it's
also
a social affair—an opportunity for Irys and Hektor and my entire house to thank you for your many services to us. While I'm sure Hektor would find it difficult to express in so many words, you've become very important to both him and Irys … and to me. Not simply as a loyal, courageous, and highly competent servant, but as an individual we treasure for
who
you are as much as for
what
you are.”

Sarmouth felt his cheeks tighten with an unaccustomed heat, but the empress held his eyes levelly.

“All that's true,” she told him softly, “yet tonight, we're about to ask something … extraordinary of you. Something you may not be able to give us, and something which—I'm afraid—places you in peril of your life. I hope you can forgive us for that.”

She paused, and the baron set his wine glass down on the spotless white tablecloth.

“Your Majesty,” he told her simply, “there's nothing to forgive. I
am
your servant, and the Empire's. It would be my honor to grant you any service within my power.”

“Don't be too hasty, Sir Dunkyn.”

Sharleyan smiled again, and this time he recognized the oddity, the edge of apprehension and … sorrow in that smile. She looked at him for a second or two, then glanced over her shoulder to where Captain Chwaeriau had stood post behind her chair for the entire meal.

“Nimue?” she said quietly.

Sarmouth's eyes snapped to the
seijin
, who bowed briefly but deeply to the empress, then stepped around the table to face the baron across it.

“My Lord,” she told him, “when Her Majesty said she was about to ask you for something ‘extraordinary,' she was referring to me. To your ability to accept who and what I truly am, and how
Seijin
Merlin and I came to serve Charis. We want you to know how that happened, what it truly means, and what the war against the Group of Four is truly about. Because what it's
truly
about is far greater than the corruption of the Group of Four and the current vicarate, and it goes back far, far farther in time than you could possibly know.”

Sarmouth stared at her, then darted a quick look at Sharleyan while his brain tried to grapple with what she'd just said. The empress' expression was impassive, and he flicked a look at Hektor and Irys. Their expressions were tauter than Sharleyan's, worried—possibly even frightened—yet he found that somehow reassuring. They were worried about
him
, he realized. Not about whatever the
seijin
was about to say to him, but about him, as someone who was as important to them as a
person
as Sharleyan had just told him he was. He looked into his flag lieutenant's eyes for a moment, then back at Captain Chwaeriau.

“I'm prepared to hear whatever it is you have to tell me,
Seijin
,” he said without a quaver, and realized it was true.

She gazed back at him for a handful of heartbeats, then bowed across the table almost as deeply as she'd bowed to Sharleyan.

“I believe you are, My Lord,” she said as she straightened. “I hope you'll still feel that way when we've finished.”

She paused, as if drawing a deep breath, then squared her shoulders.

“My Lord, the truth is that everything you've ever been taught about the Church and the Archangels is a lie.” He stiffened, but she went on in that same measured voice. “A thousand years ago, before human beings ever touched the surface of Safehold, there was a war. It was a war between something called the ‘Terran Federation' and something called the ‘Gbaba,' and it began at a place called Crestwell's Star when a ship named
Swiftsure
first encountered—”

*   *   *

“You were serious when you said you were going to ask something extraordinary of me, weren't you, Your Majesty?” Sir Dunkyn Yairley said slowly the better part of four hours later.

His brown eyes were haunted as he looked back and forth between his empress and the blue-eyed, red-haired young woman who claimed to be more ancient than the Creation itself … and yet less than three months old. Those eyes traveled to the side table where the fireplace poker she'd tied into knots to demonstrate her strength lay beside the “communicator” over which Emperor Cayleb himself had spoken and the “hologram projector” which had shown him the fallen Archangel Kau-yung personally speaking to a woman a thousand years dead. He looked at all those items, remembered all those things, and he wanted, more than almost anything in the world, to lick his lips, but he refused to.

He sat very still, aware that even though they'd been very careful not to say it, his life hung by a thread. They'd told him too much,
shown
him too much, for it to work any other way. And deep within him a part of him wanted that thread to snap. Wanted to turn away, to wail a grief-ridden lament over the dead corpse of all he'd believed in, everything he'd ever known was true. What they wanted—what they
demanded
—that he believe instead turned the Archangels he'd trusted and revered for his entire life not simply into mortals, not simply into imposters and liars, but into
traitors
. Into betrayers and mass murderers on an inconceivable scale. And at the same time, it transformed Shan-wei and Kau-yung from the greatest traitors in history into the honorable and blameless
victims
of those murderous “Archangels” he'd loved so deeply. It was impossible, it simply couldn't be true, and his skin crawled at the thought of giving his service—and his soul—to Shan-wei herself.

Yet for all of that, it was also impossible for him to simply reject what they'd told him. It explained too many things about the present war, about the new weapons, the new concepts spilling out of Charis and the Royal College. Too many things about the capabilities of Charisian spies and how smoothly Sharleyan and Cayleb functioned as a coordinated team even when they were tens of thousands of miles apart.

And then there's the Archbishop
, he thought, glancing at Maikel Staynair who sat in his own chair, hands folded before him on the table, looking back at Sarmouth with an expression that mingled understanding with compassion and a steel-hard fidelity.
There's not a more godly man in all the world, not
one
who could match Archbishop Maikel's gentleness and love, his fearless defense of his flock, or his tolerance and compassion even for those who hate him. And yet he wants me to believe the Church herself is nothing but a monstrous lie
.

“I don't know if I can believe all you've told me and shown me, Your Majesty,” he said finally. “That the …
seijins
are capable of even more than I ever suspected they were, or that you—and they—truly possess all the miraculous powers you've demonstrated to me …
that
I have no choice but to believe. But that the Archangels, the Church, God Himself are
lies
goes far beyond that, and the
Writ
offers explanations in plenty for everything you've shown me.”

“Of course it does, My Lord,” the archbishop said simply, and Sarmouth's eyes returned to him. “It must offer those explanations—those demons and fallen archangels and all the unclean, blasphemous powers with which they tempt the children of God—in order to accomplish its own goals. And just as you fear at this moment that we may have interwoven truth and compassion and love for our fellow men and women into a false explanation in the service of Shan-wei, the
Writ
weaves truth, compassion, and love into a false explanation in the service of Langhorne and the rest of his command group. As you say, we can demonstrate our
capabilities
to you by demonstrating Nimue's marvelous strength, her pieces of equipment, our ability to communicate with Siddar City from this very room. Those are concrete things you can touch, hear, feel. The truth of what we
believe
and what we ask
you
to believe is far more difficult to demonstrate. Yet the
Writ
itself says you will know who and what a person is by what that person does in his or her life. At this moment, in this place, how will you judge Nimue and Merlin, Cayleb and Sharleyan, and Hektor and Irys by what they've done in their lives? And how will you judge Zhaspahr Clyntahn, Wyllym Rayno, the Inquisition, and all the hideous things Mother Church has done in their service?”

“If it were that simple, Your Eminence, there'd be no war on Safehold,” Sarmouth replied. “
Men
can be evil, not matter their station. Mother Church has punished criminals among her episcopacy and even the vicarate before now. And the fact that men—or women—are
good
doesn't necessarily make them
holy
, either. How often has the Church taught that Shan-wei seduces men and women by appealing to their
goodness
, not to the darkness within them?”

“And how essential would it be to the Church we've revealed to you this night to teach precisely that, be it ever so dark and deadly a lie?” Staynair riposted softly.

Sarmouth closed his eyes, poised between two equally agonizing possibilities. His faith told him Staynair was lying, that the archbishop
must
be lying. Yet reason, his own eyes, his trust in his monarchs, and his own sense of duty all told him
Langhorne
must have lied. That he, like every other man and woman who'd ever lived on Safehold, had given his faith, his service, and his love to the greatest falsehood in human history.

And whether they're telling the truth or not, they can't allow me to leave this room alive unless they're convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that I believe them
, he thought coldly.

He opened his eyes again and found Nimue Alban watching him across the table through the calm, sapphire eyes of Nimue Chwaeriau. He looked back at her, and she tipped her head to one side and smiled at him almost compassionately.

“My Lord,” she said, “I think I know at least one thing running through your mind right now, and you're right. If you choose to reject what we've told you, if you choose to place your loyalty and ability, all the things which make you so valuable to the Empire and to the fight against the Group of Four, in the service of the lie, we can't allow you to leave this room alive. But it would be a betrayal of all we ourselves believe and of the deep affection Hektor and Irys have for you if we were to repay your sense of honor with death. Until a year or two ago, that would have been our only option, yet that's no longer true. We still lack many of the capabilities the Federation took for granted, but shortly after Prince Nahrmahn's death, Merlin instructed Owl to produce new batches of the drugs used aboard the starships which brought humanity to Safehold, and one of them—you might think of it as a … sleeping draught—simulates physical death almost perfectly. If you're unable to continue to serve Charis with the same devotion and courage with which you've always served her in the past, I'm afraid you'll suffer a ‘fatal stroke' this evening. And in about a five-day or so, you'll wake up again, none the worse for wear, in the Cave. You'll be imprisoned there, I'm sorry to say, but in conditions of comfort and respect. I hope that if that happens, in the fullness of time, you'll be able to accept that we've told you nothing but the truth, yet honesty compels me to admit that we could never return your old life. In that sense, you would, indeed, be dead, because you couldn't come back from the grave in the eyes of the world.”

“Please, Sir,” Hektor said, reaching out his good hand towards him. “I realize how unfair it is of us to ask this of you, but we truly have no choice. We
need
you, even more than we ever needed you before.”

Sarmouth looked back at the youthful duke, his heart twisted by the conflict between affection—love—and a lifetime's faith. He
wanted
to believe Hektor and the others, he realized. He truly wanted to … but that was the snare Shan-wei always laid before men. That was—

“Sir Dunkyn.”

Irys Aplyn-Ahrmahk stood. She walked around the table to stand in front of him and laid her hands on his shoulders, and her gaze met his unflinchingly.

“I owe you my life,” she told him. “I owe you more than that. I owe you the chance to meet the man I love and the child I'm about to bear him, and I owe you my brother's—my Prince's—life. Those are debts I can never repay. But I tell you this now, with all the honesty within me.

“I knew none of this until the day Hektor sacrificed his life to save mine. That's precisely what he did, because neither of us dreamed it might be possible for him to be so terribly wounded and survive. I know that discovering he could be saved after all—and that he was—biases me towards believing the best about the people who restored him to me. But the chance they took—the risk they ran—in telling
me
the truth was even greater than the risk we've taken in telling you. It might have devastated everything they'd fought for years to accomplish here in Corisande. They knew that … and they never hesitated. That's who they are, who
we
are, and because we need you and because we love you—because
I
love you—I beg you to believe the truth. Long before I ever wed Hektor, before Sharleyan and Cayleb allowed Daivyn and me to return to Corisande and trusted us to do what was right, I knew where I stood. I discovered that aboard
your
ship between Charis and Chisholm, and it terrified me because I realized Archbishop Maikel had been right all along—that
I
had to choose what I believed. What I could give my life to accomplishing. And when I realized that, I knew I would rather stand beside people like Sharleyan and Cayleb—and beside the people who loved and followed them—in the deepest pit of Hell than stand in the highest Heaven with any God who could agree with Zhaspahr Clyntahn. You want that, too. I
know
you do, because I've come to know you. And if you read all the horrors in the
Book of Schueler
, if you read all the lies in the
Book of Chihiro
, then you know that Zhaspahr Clyntahn's God—the God of Mother Church—
does
agree with him.”