Probably has something to do with the fact that we've kicked the Loyalists' asses at sea every time we've crossed swords, he thought. Except, he corrected himself much more grimly, where Thirsk is concerned, of course.

That thought hit harder than usual as the overland convoy carrying Gwylym Manthyr and his men crept steadily towards Zion. Grief for a friend and anger at his own helplessness seethed just below the surface for a moment, but he made himself push those emotions back into the depths. It felt disloyal, yet there wasn't anything he could do to change what was going to happen, and Gwylym wouldn't have thanked him for letting friendship distract him from his own duties and responsibilities.

"Captain Yairley, High Admiral," Mahzyngail announced, and Rock Point nodded. The young Chisholmian was still feeling his way into his duties, although one might not have supposed that from his confident demeanor. He wasn't yet as familiar with his admiral's professional and personal relationships as he might have been, however, and he'd decided-wisely, in Rock Point's opinion-to err on the side of formality until he got them all straightened out in his own mind.

"So I see," Rock Point said, and smiled at the young man. "For future reference, Haarlahm, Sir Dunkyn is an old acquaintance. I know him well. So be sure you keep an eye on the silverware when he's around."

Mahzyngail's nod of acknowledgment bobbled noticeably on the last sentence. He froze for just a moment, then completed the movement.

"I'll strive to bear that in mind, Sir," he said, and Rock Point chuckled.

"See you do," he said, then held out his right hand to Yairley. "I'm going to stay moored right where I am. Rank has its privileges and I'll be damned if I'll clump around when I don't have to. Sit."

He pointed with his left hand while the two of them clasped arms, and Yairley settled into the indicated chair with a small smile of his own. He was a naturally less demonstrative man than Rock Point, and more than one of his fellows had put him down as a dour, fussy worrier. There might actually be some accuracy in that, the high admiral thought, but only a very small accuracy.

"How's Destiny coming?" he demanded, coming straight to the point.

"The dockyard says I can have her back Thursday." Yairley shrugged. "I'll believe that when I see it, but I think we probably will be able to warp her out to the roadstead sometime in the next five-day or so. We're taking her gundeck guns back onboard this afternoon, the carronades will come back aboard tomorrow morning, and I'm reasonably satisfied with her repairs. The sail loft's running behind, though. That's why I'm doubtful about Thursday. Once they get the new canvas delivered, though, we'll be in reasonably good shape."

"Careless of you to break her that way in the first place," Rock Point said with a broad smile, and Yairley smiled back with considerably less amusement.

"So you'll be ready to take her back to sea before the end of the month?" the high admiral continued.

"I don't think we'll be anything like properly worked up by then, but, yes, Sir." Yairley's shoulders shrugged very slightly. "I've got a lot of inexperienced men and outright landsmen to turn into trained seamen somehow, and getting them to sea's probably the best way to be about it."

"You're not the only one with that problem, believe me!" Rock Point said sourly. He looked out the quarter windows at the busy panorama of King's Harbor. "The only thing worse than figuring out where to get the men we need is figuring out how to pay them once we've got them." He grimaced. "I used to think it was funny watching Bryahn and Ironhill arm wrestling over the budget. Somehow it's not so humorous anymore."

He gazed at the anchorage for another moment, then turned back to Yairley.

"Did you go over those notes I sent you about Ahlfryd's new 'high-angle' guns?"

"Yes, Sir. Very interesting stuff, although I was a bit at a loss as to why you were telling me about them." Rock Point raised an eyebrow and Yairley shrugged. "It was pretty obvious he must've been working on them for some time, especially if they're as close to ready to deploy as your memo suggested. Since I hadn't heard a whisper about them-and no one else had, either, as far as I know-I have to assume they were another one of Baron Seamount's 'Top Secret, Cut Your Own Throat After Reading' projects. Not the sort of thing a galleon captain would really need to know about, I'd've thought."

"No?" Rock Point smiled a bit oddly. "Well, you did a good job convincing Jahras to stay in port when Harpahr and Sun Rising came calling last year, Dunkyn," he went on in an obvious non sequitur. "And even with that little ... excitement of yours in Scrabble Sound, you've done even better, since. So I'm afraid I'm taking Destiny away from you, in a manner of speaking."

"I beg your pardon, Sir?" Yairley's tone was considerably sharper than he usually allowed himself, and Rock Point smiled slightly.

"I said 'in a manner of speaking,'" he pointed out. "Which is my way of telling you you've been promoted to rear admiral. Congratulations, Dunkyn."

Yairley's eyes widened, and the high admiral chuckled.

"I hate to say this, but you didn't get your streamer just because we need flag officers so badly with all this sudden expansion. You also got it because you damned well deserve it. Frankly, it's overdue, but we also need good galleon captains, and you're one of the best we've got. As a matter of fact, I actually hesitated about submitting your name to His Majesty. Not because of any reservations on my part, but because I'm only too well aware of how badly we're going to need those same good captains to lick all these newcomers into shape."

"I'm honored, Sir," Yairley said after a moment, "although I'm going to hate giving up Destiny. If I may, Lieutenant Lathyk's overdue for promotion and he-"

"To repeat myself, I did say you'd be giving her up 'in a manner of speaking,' Dunkyn. I assumed that given your choice of flagships, you'd probably pick her. Was I correct?"

"Yes, Sir. Of course!"

"Well, unless I'm mistaken, it's still a flag officer's privilege to request the flag captain of his choice. Now I'd assumed someone of your well-known demanding disposition wouldn't have put up with someone like Lathyk unless he was at least marginally competent. If I was wrong, if you really want him promoted to, say, commander and given one of the new brigs instead, I suppose I could go back to His Majesty and change my current recommendation."

"And that recommendation would be precisely what, Sir?" Yairley regarded his superior with a distinctly suspicious expression.

"That he be promoted to captain immediately and assigned as HMS Destiny's commanding officer."

"Upon mature consideration, Sir, I see no reason you should put yourself to the trouble or inconvenience His Majesty by changing your recommendation."

"I thought that was how you'd see it." Rock Point chuckled, then heaved himself to his feet. "Come take a look at the chart."

He crossed to the table, Yairley at his side, and the two of them gazed down at the huge chart of the Gulf of Mathyas and much smaller Gulf of Jahras. Rock Point leaned over and thumped an index finger on Silkiah Bay.

"As you'll know better than most, we've got an awful lot of 'Silkiahan' galleons moving in and out of Silk Town with Charisian cargoes," he said. "Now, I've never been one for subordinating military decisions to economic ones, but in this case we're talking about a big enough piece of our total trade to make anyone nervous. To be honest, that's one reason we've stayed away from"-his fingertip slid down to the southwest and tapped once-"Desnair and the Gulf of Jahras. We're not certain why Clyntahn hasn't made a bigger push to shut down the Silkiahans' and the Siddarmarkians' defiance of his embargo, and we haven't wanted to do anything to draw his attention to Silk Town or change his mind in that regard. It's not just good for our own manufactories and merchant marine, Dunkyn. It's steadily undermining the Group of Four's authority in both the Republic and the Grand Duchy, and it's simultaneously drawing more and more Siddarmarkians and Silkiahans into our arms, whether they realize it or not.

"Nonetheless," he tapped the city of Iythria, "it's time we did something about the Desnairian fleet. Even after the Battle of the Markovian Sea, we actually don't have much better than parity with the combined Desnairian and Dohlaran fleets. I'd like better numbers than that, of course, but while Gorath Bay and Iythria are barely thirteen hundred miles apart in a straight line, they're damned near seventeen thousand miles apart as a ship sails. That's just a tad far for them to be supporting one another if we should decide to concentrate our strength in order to overwhelm one of them in isolation, wouldn't you say?"

He raised his eyebrows, and Yairley heard something suspiciously like a snort of amusement from Zhastrow Tymkyn's direction.

"Yes, Sir. I think I'd agree with that," the newly promoted admiral replied.

"I'm glad to hear that. Because, next month, you're going to help me take advantage of that little fact. In fact, you're going to be carrying my dispatches to Admiral Shain ahead of the rest of the fleet ... and I'm sending some new ships with you. Which is why you got that memo about the high-angle guns you were wondering about."

Rock Point smiled, and this time there was no humor at all in the expression.

.IV.

Royal College, Tellesberg Palace, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis Dr. Rahzhyr Mahklyn looked up as someone knocked on his office door.

"Yes?"

"Father Paityr is here, Doctor," his senior assistant, Dairak Bowave, announced through the closed door.

"Ah! Excellent, Dairak! Please show the Father in!"

Mahklyn stood behind his desk, beaming as Bowave escorted Paityr Wylsynn into his office. It was the first time the intendant had actually visited the Royal College, and Mahklyn knew most of his colleagues were a little nervous about his decision to do so now. They'd skirted the edge of what Mother Church deemed acceptable knowledge for so long that having the official keeper of the Inquisition in Old Charis actually in their midst was ... disconcerting.

Of course, those worried colleagues of his didn't know everything he knew about Paityr Wylsynn.

"Come in, Father!" Mahklyn held out his right hand. "It's an honor to welcome you."

"And it's a privilege to be here, Doctor." Wylsynn took the proffered hand, and Mahklyn surveyed the younger man's expression carefully. Wylsynn was obviously aware of his intense regard, but he only looked back, meeting the older man's eyes levelly. "I've been away from my own office too long," he continued, "but there are times when anyone needs a bit of a sabbatical. A retreat to think things through and settle oneself back down, you might say."

"I understand entirely, Father. Please, have a seat."

Mahklyn escorted Wylsynn to the armchairs arranged across a small table from one another near one of the large office's windows. They sat and Bowave set a tray on the table between them. It held two tall, delicate glasses and a crystal pitcher beaded with moisture, and Wylsynn's eyebrows rose as he beheld it.

"A sinful luxury, I know, Father," Mahklyn said wryly. "For decades I was perfectly happy living a properly ascetic scholarly existence in the old College down by the docks. Then it burned to the ground and His Majesty insisted we relocate to the Palace. Little did I realize that would be just the first crack in my armor of austerity!"

He poured chilled lemonade into the glasses, and ice-actual ice, Wylsynn realized-tapped musically against the inside of the pitcher.

"His Majesty insists we take advantage of his hospitality," the doctor continued, handing a glass to his guest, "which includes the royal icehouse. I tried manfully, I assure you, to resist the temptation of that sinful luxury, but my younger granddaughter Eydyth discovered its existence and I was doomed. Doomed, I tell you!"

Wylsynn laughed and accepted the glass, then sipped gracefully. Ice and icehouses had been much more easily come by in the cool northern land of his birth than in excessively sunny Charis. There was ice on the very tallest mountains even here in Charis and even in summer, but getting to it was far more difficult, and there were no conveniently frozen winter lakes from which it might be harvested, either. That made it a scandalously pricey luxury in Tellesberg.

"Will there be anything else, Doctor?" Bowave inquired, and Mahklyn shook his head.

"No, Dairak. I think the Father and I will manage just fine. If I do need anything, I'll call, I promise."

"Of course." Bowave bobbed a bow in Mahklyn's direction, then bowed rather more formally to Wylsynn. "Father Paityr," he said, and withdrew, closing the door behind him.

"This is good," Wylsynn said, taking another swallow of lemonade. "And I do appreciate the ice, although it's really too expensive to be wasting on me."

"That's what I told Eydyth when she discovered it," Mahklyn said dryly. "Unfortunately, young Zhan was in the vicinity at the time." He rolled his eyes. "I think Princess Mahrya's a very good influence on him in most ways, but he's acquiring the habit of largesse, especially when she's looking and he can impress her with it. Mind you, she isn't impressed by it-she's too much her parents' daughter for that sort of nonsense-but he doesn't realize that yet, and he's a teenager who's discovered just how attractive his fiancee actually is. So when he heard me telling Eydyth I thought it would be a bad idea, he insisted we make use of it. And, to be fair, if you pack it in enough sawdust you can actually ship ice all the way from Chisholm to Tellesberg in the middle of summer and get here with as much as half of your original cargo. Which, given the price in Tellesberg, is enough to make a very healthy profit!"

"I suspect there's going to be an even stronger market for ice-makers in Charis than there is for air-conditioning, when the time finally comes," Paitryk said, looking across at his host.

Mahklyn sat very still for a moment, looking back at him thoughtfully. Then he gave a slow nod.

"I imagine there is, Father. And we could probably actually get away with a compressed-air plant to manufacture it without worrying about the Proscriptions. I'm sure Edwyrd could even power it with one of his waterwheels."

"Please, Doctor." Wylsynn closed his eyes and shuddered theatrically. "I can already hear the Temple Loyalists' outrage! Much as I like cold drinks, I'd really prefer to avoid that battle if we can. After all," his eyes opened again, meeting Mahklyn's, "we're going to have so many others to fight first."

"True." Mahklyn nodded again. "May I ask how you feel about that, Father?"

"About kicking over the traces where the Proscriptions are concerned?" Wylsynn gave a short, sharp crack of laughter. "That doesn't bother me at all, trust me! Not now. But if you mean how do I feel about discovering the truth about the Church and the 'Archangels,' that's a bit more complicated. There's still a part of me that expects the Rakurai to come crashing through the window any minute now for my daring to even question, far less reject, the will of Langhorne. And there's another part of me that wants to march straight into the Cathedral next Wednesday and proclaim the truth to the entire congregation. And there's another part of me that's just plain pissed off at God for letting all this happen."

He paused, and then sat back in his chair and laughed again, far more gently, as he saw Mahklyn's expression.

"Sorry, Doctor. I imagine that was a little more answer than you really wanted."

"Not so much more than I wanted as more than I expected, Father. I'm relieved to hear you're angry, though. It certainly beats some other reactions I could think of ... as long as the anger's directed at the right targets, of course."

"It took me a while to accept that same conclusion, Doctor, and I won't pretend I'm as comfortable as I was back in the days of my blissful ignorance. But I've also discovered at least a shadow of Archbishop Maikel's serenity lurking in the depths of my own soul, although it's going to be a while yet before I can be as ... tranquil about all of this as he is. On the other hand, I realized I wouldn't be angry at God as I am unless I still believed in Him, which was something of a relief. And along the way, I've also discovered my belief is even more precious, in some ways, because it no longer rests upon the incontrovertible proof of the historical record. I almost suspect that that's the true secret of the Archbishop's faith."

"In what way?" Mahklyn asked with genuine interest. He'd found himself slipping into what Owl's library records would have described as a Deist mindset, and he didn't know whether or not to envy Maikel Staynair's fiercer, more personal faith.

"The real secret of the strength of Archbishop Maikel's faith is almost absurdly simple," Wylsynn told him. "In fact, he's explained it to us dozens of times in sermons, every time he tells us there comes a point at which any child of God has to decide what he truly believes. Decide what he believes, Doctor. Not simply accept, not simply never bother to question, based on 'what everyone knows' or on The Testimonies or 'the Archangel Chihiro's' Holy Writ, but decide for himself." The young man who'd been a Schuelerite shrugged. "It's that simple and that hard, and I'm not quite there yet."

"Neither am I," Mahklyn confessed.

"I suspect very few people in history, whether here on Safehold or back on Old Terra, have ever matched our Archbishop's personal faith," Wylsynn pointed out.

"A personal faith which, thank God, doesn't prevent him from being one of the most pragmatic men I've ever met," Mahklyn said.

"As long as we're not talking about something which would compromise his own principles, at least," Wylsynn agreed.

"And you feel the same way?" Mahklyn asked quietly.

"And I'm trying very hard to feel the same way." Wylsynn quirked a brief smile. "I'm afraid I haven't quite decided where my principles are going to settle now that I've learned the truth. In fact, I'm afraid I'm discovering that I have very few principles-or hesitations, at least-when it comes to considering things to do to those bastards in Zion."

"I can work with that," Mahklyn said with an answering and far colder smile. "Of course, I've been thinking about it for a while longer than you have."

"True, but I have a very personal motivation for seeing every one of them dangling at the end of a rope, just like those butchers in Ferayd."

"By the oddest turn of fate, I believe that's precisely what Their Majesties and Captain Athrawes have in mind, Father."

"In that case, why don't we see what we could do to expedite that moment?" Wylsynn's naturally warm eyes were as cold as the gray ice of Hsing-wu's Passage in winter. "I've been giving some thought to Commander Mahndrayn and Baron Seamount's more recent ideas, and even more to Master Howsmyn's. I don't believe the Baron's notions are going to present any serious problems, but Master Howsmyn's getting close to the Proscriptions' limits. I can probably cover his interest in hydraulics by an extension of my attestation for his accumulators, but his proposed steam engines clearly cross the line into exactly the sort of knowledge Jwo-jeng and Langhorne wanted to make certain we'd never go anywhere near."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

"In my present mood, that's actually a powerful recommendation for building the things tomorrow," Wylsynn said dryly. "Nonetheless, we're obviously going to have problems if we don't prepare the ground carefully. Fortunately, all the years I spent condemning intendants and inquisitors who connived at getting around the Proscriptions in return for the proper considerations gave me all sorts of examples of logic-chopping when I approached my new task, and it occurred to me that if I simply borrowed a page from their book, the steam engine problem might not be so insurmountable as I'd first thought."

"Indeed?" Mahklyn leaned back and raised his eyebrows hopefully.

"Of course not!" Wylsynn assured him. "It's very simple, Doctor! We've used steam and pressure cookers since the Creation in things like food preparation and preservation. There's nothing new or tainted about generating steam! Who could possibly object to someone's doing that? And when you come right down to it, producing steam the way Master Howsmyn is proposing is simply a way of generating wind pressure on demand, isn't it? Of course it is! And we've used windmills since the Creation, too. For that matter, wind is one of Jwo-jeng's allowable trinity of wind, water, and muscle! So except for the novel notion of making wind where and how it's most urgently required, I see no barrier under the Proscriptions to the development of Master Howsmyn's new device."

He leaned back in his own chair and smiled broadly at his host.

"Do you?" he asked.

.V.

King's Harbor, Helen Island; Navy Powder Mill #3, Big Tirian Island; and Tellesberg Palace, City of Tellesberg Kingdom of Old Charis "Have you got those new fuse notes for Master Howsmyn, Urvyn?"

"Right here, Sir," Urvyn Mahndrayn said patiently, tapping the leather briefcase clasped under his left arm with his right forefinger. "And I also have the improved high-angle gun sketches, and the memoranda High Admiral Rock Point wants me to deliver, and the memo from Baron Ironhill, and your invitation for him to dine with you when he visits Tellesberg next month." He smiled at his superior and raised his eyebrows innocently. "Was there anything else, Sir?"

"You," Sir Ahlfryd Hyndryk, Baron Seamount, said severely, swivel chair squeaking as he leaned back, the better to contemplate the commander, "are an insubordinate young whelp, aren't you?"

"Never, Sir!" Mahndrayn shook his head, expression more innocent than ever. "How could you possibly think such a thing?"

"After working with you for the last couple of years?" Seamount snorted. "Trust me, it's easy."

"I'm shocked to hear you say that, Sir," Mahndrayn said mournfully.