"I can understand that." Sharleyan touched his knee again. "But it's sons like yours who stand between everyone's daughters and men like Zhaspahr Clyntahn, General. Be proud of them, and tell them, the next time you have the chance, how grateful Cayleb and I are for all four of you."

"I will, Your Majesty," Chermyn said a bit gruffly, then cleared his throat.

"I see we're almost at shipside, Your Majesty," he said in a deliberately brisker voice, and she nodded.

"So we are. Well, I suppose it's time for all of the ridiculous departure ceremony."

"I'd as soon miss it myself, truth be told," Chermyn admitted. "And I don't envy you and His Majesty for having to put up with so much of it. To be honest," he looked at her with an undeniably hopeful expression, "I'd like to think it might be possible for someone else to take over as viceroy general and let me get away from all the fuss and folderol and back to being an honest Marine. Or even transfer to the Army."

"I don't know, General," Sharleyan said, furrowing her brow pensively while she tried not to chuckle out loud at the opening he'd given her. "You've done so well here. And while I know the situation's improved, it's still going to be ... delicate for quite some time to come."

"I know, Your Majesty," Chermyn sighed. He obviously hadn't expected to convince her.

"Still," Sharleyan said, drawing out the word as the carriage came to a halt and Merlin Athrawes and Edwyrd Seahamper swung down from their horses beside it. "I suppose I can think of one other duty Cayleb and I really need a good, experienced military officer and proven administrator to deal with. I'm afraid it's not a combat assignment, although for all I know there may be some fighting entailed, but it would get you out of Corisande," she ended hopefully, raising her eyebrows at him.

"I'd be honored to serve you and His Majesty in any way I could, Your Majesty," Chermyn said, although he couldn't quite hide his disappointment at the words "it's not a combat assignment."

"Well, I suppose in that case we could send Baron Green Valley down here to replace you, at least temporarily," Sharleyan said.

"Are you certain about that, Your Majesty?" Chermyn sounded a little startled. "I understood the Baron was going to be fully occupied in Zebediah for quite some time."

"Oh, he's been doing a very good job there," Sharleyan agreed with a nod. "And Duke Eastshare wants him back in Maikelberg, of course, so we may not be able to send him as your replacement, after all. Still, I'm sure we'll be able to find someone. In fact, now that I've thought about it for a moment, I think your Colonel Zhanstyn could probably hold the fort for you, possibly even on a semi-permanent or a permanent basis. But as far as Baron Green Valley is concerned, he was never going to be our permanent viceroy in Zebediah."

"He wasn't?" Chermyn looked at her in surprise as Seahamper moved to open the carriage door and let down the steps while Merlin stood facing outward, eyes scanning the crowd. She cocked her head at the Marine, and he half raised one hand. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty. I must have misunderstood."

"The Baron's a very good man, General, but he was only there to keep a lid on the island until we could decide who to name to succeed Symmyns as grand duke. That was hardly an easy decision, of course. We needed a man of proven ability and loyalty. Someone we knew we could absolutely rely upon, and to be honest, someone who deserved the recognition and the rewards which were going to come along with all the undeniable pains of straightening out the mess Symmyns left behind. Trust me, the position's not going to be a sinecure for a long time to come, General!"

Chermyn nodded in understanding, and she shrugged.

"And once we did make up our mind who to choose, naturally we'd have to notify the new grand duke before we could even think about recalling Baron Green Valley ... which I've just done, now that I think about it, Grand Duke Zebediah."

Her timing was perfect, she thought delightedly. The door opened right on cue as Chermyn suddenly stopped nodding and stared at her in stupefied shock. He opened his mouth, but no words came out, and Sharleyan nodded at Sairaih, who looked as if her grin were about to split her face in two as she gathered up Princess Alahnah's bassinet and diaper bag.

"Well, I see we're here, Your Grace, if I may be a little premature," Empress Sharleyan Ahrmahk said, bestowing a brilliant smile on the thunderstruck Marine, and then she held out her hand to Seahamper and descended the carriage steps into a hurricane of cheers, trumpets, and the thud of saluting guns.

JULY,.

YEAR OF GOD 895.

.I.

Hospice of the Holy Bedard and The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands "Langhorne bless you, Your Grace. Langhorne bless you!"

"Thank you, Father," Rhobair Duchairn said. "I appreciate the sentiment, but it's not as if I've been working as hard at this as you have. Or"-the vicar's smile carried an odd edge of bitterness-"for as long, either."

He laid a hand on Father Zytan Kwill's frail shoulder. The Bedardist upper-priest was far into his eighties and growing increasingly fragile with age, yet he burned with an inner intensity Duchairn could only envy.

"That may be true, Your Grace," Kwill replied, "but this winter..." He shook his head. "Do you realize we've had only thirty dead reported in the Hospice this winter from all causes? Only thirty!"

"I know." Duchairn nodded, although he also knew considerably more than thirty of Zion's inhabitants had perished over the previous winter. Yet Kwill had a point. The Order of Bedard and the Order of Pasquale were responsible for caring for Zion's poor and indigent. Well, technically all Mother Church's orders had that duty, but the Bedardists and the Pasqualates had shouldered the primary responsibility centuries earlier. They jointly administered the soup kitchens and the shelters, and the Pasqualates provided the healers who were supposed to see that the most vulnerable of God's children had the medical care to survive Zion's icy cold.

The problem, of course, was that they hadn't been doing that.

Duchairn looked out the window of Kwill's spartan office. The Hospice of the Holy Bedard was in one of Zion's older buildings, and the office had a spectacular view over the broad blue waters of Lake Pei, but it was as bare and sparsely furnished as an ascetic's cell in one of the meditative monasteries. No doubt that reflected Father Zytan's personality, but it was also because the priest had poured every mark he could lay hands on into his hopeless task for the last forty-seven years. With so many desperate needs, the thought of spending anything on himself would never even have crossed his mind.

And in all that time, Mother Church has never supported him the way she should have, the Treasurer thought grimly. Not once. Not a single time have we funded him and the others the way we ought to have.

The vicar crossed to the window, clasping his hands behind him, looking out at the leaves and blossoms which clothed the hills striding down from Zion to the huge lake. A cool breeze blew in through the opening, touching his face with gentle fingers, and the sails of small craft, barges, and larger merchant ships dotted the sparkling water under the sun's warm rays. He could see fishing boats farther out, and perfectly formed mountains of cloud sailed across the heavens. On a day like this, it was easy even for Duchairn, who'd spent the last thirty years of his life in Zion, to forget how savage north central Haven's winters truly were. To forget how the lake turned into a blue and gray sheet of ice, thick enough to support galleon-sized ice boats. To forget how snow drifted higher than a tall man's head in the city's streets. How some of those drifts, on the city's outskirts, climbed as much as two or even three stories up the sides of buildings.

And it's even easier for those of us who spend our winters in the Temple to forget that sort of unpleasantness, he acknowledged. We don't have to deal with it, do we? We have our own little enclave, blessed by God, and we don't venture out of it ... except, perhaps, on the milder days when the wind doesn't howl and fresh blizzards don't go screaming around our sanctified ears.

He wanted to believe that was the reason for his own decades of inactivity. Wanted to think he'd been so busy, so focused on his manifold responsibilities that he'd simply gotten distracted. That he'd honestly forgotten to actually look out his window and see what was happening to those outside the Temple's mystically heated and cooled environment because he'd been so preoccupied with his personal duties and obligations. Oh, how he wanted to think that!

You were "preoccupied," all right, Rhobair, he told himself, filling his lungs with the cool air, inhaling the scent of the blossoms in the planter under Father Zytan's window. You were preoccupied with fine wines, gourmet cooking, charming feminine companionship, and all the arduous tasks of counting coins and managing your alliances within the vicarate. Pity you didn't stop to think about what the Archangels themselves told you were any priest's true obligations and duties. If you had, Father Zytan might've had the money and the resources he needed to actually do something about those responsibilities.

"I'm overjoyed we lost so few ... this winter, Father," he said, not looking away from the window. "I only regret that we lost so many the winter before, and the winter before that."

Kwill looked at the vicar's back, silhouetted against the bright window, and wondered if Duchairn realized how much pain rested like an anchor in the depths of his own voice. The vicar was a Chihirite, like the majority of Mother Church's administrators, without the trained insight into feelings and emotional processes that Kwill's own order taught. Perhaps he truly didn't understand his own feelings ... or how clearly his tone communicated them, at any rate.

Or how dangerous they could be to him under the present circumstances.

"Your Grace," the upper-priest said, "I've spent considerably better than half my life feeling exactly that same regret every spring." Duchairn turned his head to look at him, and Kwill smiled sadly. "I suppose we should grow inured to it when it happens again and again, but every body we find buried in the snow, every child who becomes an orphan, every soul we can't somehow cram into the Hospice or one of the other shelters when the temperature drops and the wind comes screaming in off the lake-every single one of those deaths takes its own tiny piece of my soul with it. I've never learned to accept it, but I've had to learn to deal with it. To admit to myself that I truly did do everything I could to minimize those deaths ... and to absolve myself of the guilt for them. It isn't easy to do that. No matter how much I've done, I'm always convinced I could-that I should-have done still more. I can know here"-he touched his temple gently-"that I truly did all I could, but it's hard to accept that here."

He touched his chest, and his sad smile grew gentler.

"I've had more practice trying to do that than you have, Your Grace. Partly because I'm the next best thing to thirty-five years older than you are. And I realize most people here in Zion and even in my own order seem to think I've been doing what I do since the Creation itself. The truth is, though, I was past forty before it even occurred to me that this should be my life's work. That it was what God had in mind for me to do." He shook his head. "Don't think for a moment all the years I wasted before I heard His voice don't come back to haunt me every winter, reminding me of all those earlier winters when I did nothing at all. I realize there are those who think of me as some sort of saintly paragon-those that don't think I'm an ornery old crackpot, at any rate!-but I was a much duller student than those people think. We hear Him when we hear Him, and it's up to Him to judge us. It's not up to others, and our own judgment is sometimes the least reliable of all, especially where our own actions are concerned."

"You're probably right, Father," Duchairn said after a long, silent moment, "yet if we don't judge ourselves, if we don't hold ourselves accountable, we turn our backs not just on our responsibilities but on ourselves. I've discovered guilt makes a bitter seasoning, but without it it's too easy to lose ourselves."

"Of course it is, Your Grace," Kwill said simply. "But if God says He's willing to forgive us when we recognize our faults and genuinely seek to amend our lives, then shouldn't we be willing to do the same thing?"

"You truly are a Bedardist, aren't you, Father?" Duchairn shook his head wryly. "And I'll try to bear your advice in mind. But the Writ says we're supposed to make recompense, to the best of our ability, to those we realize we've wronged. I'm afraid it's going to take me a while to accomplish that."

Kwill crossed the office to stand beside him at the window, but the priest didn't look out across the lake. Instead, he stood for several seconds regarding the vicar intently, gazing into his eyes. Then he reached out and laid a hand thinned by a lifetime's labors on Duchairn's chest.

"I think this is in a better state and far, far deeper than even you realize, Your Grace," he said softly. "But be careful. Even the greatest of hearts can accomplish nothing in this world after it ceases to beat."

Duchairn laid his hand across the priest's for a moment and inclined his head in what might have been agreement or simple acknowledgment. Then he inhaled deeply and stepped back.

"As always, Father Zytan, it's been both a joy and a privilege," he said more briskly. "And I'm pleased with your report, especially since I've managed to free up the funding to acquire or build additional shelters for the coming winter. Depending on where we place them, it would probably be cheaper to purchase and refurbish existing structures, and if we're going to be forced to build, it would be a good idea to get started as quickly as possible. So please give some thought to where the housing will be most urgently required. I'd like to have your recommendations for three or four new sites within the next couple of five-days."

"Of course, Your Grace. And thank you." Kwill smiled broadly. "We can always use additional roofs when the snow flies."

"I'll do my best, Father. Just as I'll do my best to bear your advice in mind." Duchairn extended his hand, and Kwill bent to brush his ring of office with his lips, then straightened. "Until next time, Father."

"May the Holy Bedard bless and keep you, Your Grace," Kwill murmured in response.

Duchairn nodded and left the office. His escort of Temple Guardsmen was waiting for him, of course. They didn't like letting him out of their sight even for his meetings with Father Zytan, and despite their discipline, it showed in their expressions.

Of course, there's more than one reason for that unhappiness at having me off doing Langhorne knows what, Duchairn thought with bitter amusement.

"Where to now, Your Grace?" the officer in command of his personal security detachment inquired politely.

"Back to the Temple, Major Phandys," Duchairn said to the man Zhaspahr Clyntahn and Allayn Maigwair had personally selected as his keeper. Their eyes met, and the vicar smiled thinly. "Back to the Temple," he repeated.

"Major Phandys is here, Your Eminence."

"Thank you, Father. Send him in."

"Of course, Your Eminence."

The secretary bowed and withdrew. A moment later, Major Khanstahnzo Phandys entered Wyllym Rayno's office. He crossed to the archbishop and bent over his extended hand to kiss his ring.

"You sent for me, Your Eminence?" the major said as he straightened.

Technically, as a Temple Guardsman, he ought to have saluted instead of kissing Rayno's ring. Since the botched arrest of the Wylsynn brothers, however, Major Phandys had become considerably more than a simple Guardsman. It was scarcely his fault that arrest had gone so radically wrong, and the Inquisition had always had a keen eye for talent that could be co-opted without officially becoming part of the Order of Schueler.

"Yes, I did, Major." Rayno sat back down behind his desk, tipped his chair back, and surveyed Phandys thoughtfully. "I've read your latest report. As always, it was complete, concise, and to the point. I could wish more of the reports which crossed my desk were like it."

"Thank you, Your Eminence," Phandys murmured when the archbishop paused, obviously expecting some response. "I strive to offer Mother Church-and the Inquisition-my best effort."

"Indeed you do, Major." Rayno smiled with unusual warmth. "In fact, I've been considering whether or not I might be able to find an even more effective use for a man of your talents and piety."

"I'm always prepared to serve wherever Mother Church can best make use of me, Your Eminence," Phandys replied. "Have you someone in mind for my current responsibilities?"

"No, not really." Rayno's smile faded. "No, I'm afraid I don't, Major. That's one reason I called you in. Can you think of anyone else in the Guard suitable for the position?"

Phandys frowned for several seconds, hands clasped respectfully behind him while he considered.

"Off the top of my head, no, I'm afraid, Your Eminence." He shook his head regretfully. "I can think of several whose loyalty and devotion would make them suitable, but none who have the rank to serve as Vicar Rhobair's senior Guardsman. Of those who do have the rank, I'm afraid I'd have ... reservations about recommending most of them. There might be one or two of sufficient rank and seniority, but none who could be assigned to him without a series of transfers to make them the logical choices. I can give you their names, if you like, Your Eminence, although I'd strongly recommend you interview them personally before you consider them for my current assignment."

"Your reasons?" Rayno's tone was honestly curious, and Phandys shrugged.

"I'd hesitate to recommend anyone I don't know personally and reasonably well, Your Eminence, but I doubt anyone ever knows someone as well as he thinks he does. And the fact that most of them are friends, or at least close acquaintances, would tend to make me suspect my own judgment. I'd simply feel more comfortable if someone with a more ... detached perspective decided whether or not they'd be suitable for the duty."

"I see."

Rayno considered that for a moment. For a rather long moment, in fact. As he'd already suggested, the Inquisition always had far too many demands for men of talent and ability, and that was especially so these days. Phandys was already young for his current rank, but Rayno could easily have him promoted to colonel or even brigadier. Yet deciding whether or not to do that represented something of a balancing act. While the higher rank would give him greater seniority and authority, it would also make him even more of a marked man among his fellows. It was sadly true that the more closely identified with the Inquisition an officer became, the less his fellows tended to confide in him. Besides....

"Please do provide me with those recommendations, Major," he said at length. "Even if I decide to leave you in your present assignment, it never hurts for the Inquisition to know where to lay its hand on Mother Church's dutiful sons when she needs them worst."

"Of course, Your Eminence." Phandys bowed slightly. "I'll have them for you by tomorrow afternoon, if that will be soon enough?"

"That will be fine, Major," Rayno said, and waved one hand in dismissal.

"Well?" Zhaspahr Clyntahn said as Wyllym Rayno entered his office. "What's our good friend Rhobair been up to lately?"

"According to all my sources, Your Grace, he's been doing precisely what he said he was going to do. He paid another visit to Father Zytan yesterday, and he's scheduled a meeting next five-day with the senior Pasqualates from all five major hospitals to discuss the coordination of healers with his shelters and soup kitchens for next winter." The archbishop shrugged. "Apparently he wants to be better organized than he was this winter."

Clyntahn rolled his eyes. He didn't have anything against a practical, reasonable level of charitable works, but the vicars of Mother Church weren't supposed to allow themselves to be distracted from their own responsibilities. At a time like this, the Church's chief financial officer had dozens of concerns upon which he might more profitably spend his time than worrying about a winter which was still months away.

The Grand Inquisitor leaned back, the fingers of his right hand drumming an irritated tattoo on his desk. Duchairn's excessive, gushy piety was becoming more and more exasperating, yet all the old arguments against allowing the Group of Four's potential enemies to suspect a genuine division in their ranks remained, although those arguments were growing weaker as the example he'd made of the Wylsynns' circle of pro-Reformist traitors sank fully home. If not for that, he'd cheerfully contemplate jettisoning Duchairn. Unfortunately, if he purged Duchairn, he'd have to come up with someone else to do the man's job, and the unpalatable fact was that no one else could do it as well as he did. That consideration was especially pointed given Mother Church's current straitened financial condition.

No, he concluded yet again, regretfully, he couldn't get rid of Duchairn yet, however much the man's softhearted, mushy-brained sanctimony sickened him. Of course, the reasons he couldn't-those same straitened financial conditions-only made the other vicar's obsession with "providing for the poor" even more maddening. Still, if Clyntahn had no choice anyway, he might as well look at the bright side. Judging by the tenor of his own agents' reports, Duchairn's demand that the Group of Four show a "kinder, gentler face" truly was helping to bolster morale here in Zion. That sort of bought-and-paid-for "loyalty" was always a perishable commodity, far less reliable than the instant obedience instilled by the Inquisition's discipline, but it was probably useful in the short term, at least.

"What about Phandys?" he asked, and Rayno considered his response carefully.

The major had become one of Zhaspahr Clyntahn's favorites, although that outcome might not have been assured, given the way he'd deprived the Grand Inquisitor of one of his most anticipated prizes. Even Clyntahn had accepted that that was scarcely his fault when he'd found himself face-to-face with Hauwerd Wylsynn in personal combat, however, and without Phandys, the Wylsynns might actually have managed to get out of Zion. They wouldn't have gotten far, but the fact that they'd had the chance to run at all would have undermined the Inquisition's aura of invincibility. The Grand Inquisitor had chosen to look on the bright side, which explained how Captain Phandys had become Major Phandys.

"I understand your desire to make the best and fullest use of Major Phandys, Your Grace," the archbishop said after a moment. "And I'm looking into possible replacements for him in his current assignment. With all due respect, however, at this time I think it would be wisest to leave him where he is."

"Why?" Clyntahn asked tersely, and Rayno shrugged.

"As the Major himself pointed out to me this afternoon, Your Grace, finding someone equally reliable to replace him as Vicar Rhobair's chief guardian would be difficult. He's prepared to recommend some potential candidates, but Vicar Allayn would be forced to juggle assignments rather obviously to put one of them into Major Phandys' present position. And, to be totally honest, the more I've thought about it the more convinced I am that we really do need to keep one of our best and most observant people in charge of Vicar Rhobair's security."

The Grand Inquisitor scowled, yet the point about keeping an eye on Duchairn was well taken, at least until they could find someone to replace him as Treasurer. Duchairn clearly knew Phandys was spying on him for the Inquisition, but he seemed resigned to the fact, and the major had demonstrated a surprising degree of tact. He went out of his way to avoid stepping on Duchairn's toes, and it was always possible the Treasurer actually appreciated his courtesy. As for Rayno's other argument, personally, Clyntahn wouldn't have given a damn if Maigwair had to rearrange assignments to put someone else into Phandys' position, but there was still that pestiferous, irritating need to preserve the fiction that the Group of Four remained fully united. If it became too obvious Clyntahn and Maigwair were assigning their own men to spy on Duchairn and Trynair, some of the currently cowed vicars might find themselves dangerously-or at least inconveniently-emboldened. And truth to tell, Duchairn was less predictable in many ways than Trynair, given the Chancellor's predictable-and manipulable-pragmatism and self-interest.

Rayno was right, he decided. Better to keep one of their best men right where he was until the time finally came to be shut of Duchairn entirely.

"All right," he growled. "I hate wasting someone of his abilities as a glorified nursemaid, but I suppose you have a point."

He frowned for another few seconds, then shrugged.

"All right," he said again, in a very different tone, changing subjects with his accustomed abruptness. "What's this we hear from Corisande?"

"Obviously our latest information is sadly out-of-date, as always, Your Grace," Rayno said a bit cautiously, "but according to my current reports, all of those arrested last year have now been tried. Formal sentencing is awaiting the arrival of either Cayleb or Sharleyan-probably Sharleyan-but all indications are that the overwhelming majority of those arrested"-even the redoubtable Rayno paused almost imperceptibly to brace himself-"have been found guilty."

Clyntahn's expression hardened and his jowls darkened, yet that was all. Some people might have been relieved by his apparent lack of reaction, but Rayno knew the Grand Inquisitor better than that.