Safehold: How Firm A Foundation - Safehold: How Firm a Foundation Part 31
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Safehold: How Firm a Foundation Part 31

I should have, he thought now, staring down into the beer mug. God forgive me, I should have. But I couldn't. I just couldn't.

He took another swallow of beer, trying to wash away the sour taste in his mouth, the knowledge that he'd failed God and the Archangel Schueler. And he wasn't even positive why. He knew his mother still loved his father dearly, despite Rahzhyr's lack of conviction. That was the reason he hadn't informed the Inquisition. He was sure of it. And yet....

Memories flowed through him. Memories of a time when he'd been a boy, not a young man faced with his father's weakness. Memories of riding on his father's shoulders, laughing as his father tickled him or wrestled with him. Memories of his father's hands teaching him the use of plane and miter saw and lathe. Memories of when Rahzhyr Dahnvahr was the tallest, strongest, smartest, most handsome man in all of Ainsail's world. And as those memories glowed through his mind once more, the suspicion returned. It wasn't his mother's love for his father which had made him too weak to do what he knew he should have done.

Well, no mortal man was perfect. Not his father, and certainly not him. But if he was as strong as he could be, and if he truly trusted in God, then he would find he had strengths as well as weaknesses, and he would learn how to use the steel in his soul to offset the soft and flabby iron. And whatever his father's faults, however badly his father might have failed or the weakness of his father's convictions, there was nothing wrong with Ainsail's faith. He'd proven that to Archbishop Wyllym's satisfaction, and Vicar Zhaspahr had personally chosen him for his mission. That was enough to awaken the sin of pride in any man, however hard Ainsail might fight against it. But perhaps God would forgive him a little pride. And it wasn't as if Ainsail could have accomplished his purpose without the aid of dozens of others, most of whom he'd never met and none of whom knew who he truly was.

"'Nother round, dearie?" the plump barmaid asked him brightly.

"Yes, I think so," he replied, setting the empty mug on her tray and dropping a silver tenth-mark beside it. Her eyes widened at the size of the coin, and she started to hand it back to him, but he put his own hand on top of it. "Keep it," he said, and smiled at her. "I'm leaving on a long voyage, and I won't have anywhere to spend it anyway. Besides, you can wish me luck for it, if you like."

"Oh, that I will!" she assured him with a broad smile. "And I'll have that new beer back to you quicker than a cat lizard could lick her ear, Sir!"

"No 'sir,'" he told her. "Just a simple sailorman."

"Not to me, you're not," she assured him.

From the glow in her eye she would have been perfectly prepared to demonstrate that to him, as well, but he only smiled and made shooing motions to send her on her way. Not that it wasn't tempting, but there were other and far more important things to concentrate on at this moment. In fact, it had probably been foolish of him to give the girl such a lavish tip. It might make her remember him later, not that "later" was going to be a problem. Besides, he'd been sent on his way with plenty of cash and, as he'd told her, he wouldn't have any place to spend the rest of it.

He leaned back in the ancient, leather-upholstered booth, smelling decades of pipe smoke, of beer, of fried sausages, fish, potatoes, and spider crabs. It was a comforting, homey kind of smell that soothed his nerves. And he had to admit there was something soothing about the ebb and flow of the conversations around him, as well.

He'd never quite fitted in in the Temple Lands, with his "islander" accent. The other boys his age had been merciless about teasing him over it, and there'd been several fistfights-one of them fairly spectacular, culminating in an uncomfortable interview with the city guard-before they'd finally learned better. But no matter how hard he'd tried, he hadn't been able to rid himself of that telltale accent, and in the end that had proven a good thing. It had helped him slip seamlessly back into the land of his birth, yet he was still more than a little amused by how right the dialect he'd tried so hard to eradicate in himself sounded falling upon his ear from others.

Well, it's not as if they're all heretics and blasphemers, now is it? he asked himself. There are plenty of Faithful still right here in Charis. They're just afraid to show it, that's all. Wave Thunder's damned spies are everywhere. They've managed to sniff out every organization the Grand Inquisitor's tried to establish here, so of course the Charisian Temple Loyalists are afraid to trust anyone enough to organize any kind of effective resistance!

For that matter, he reminded himself, there had been Charisian Loyalists who'd dared to raise their hands against their heretical, excommunicate king and his apostate bride. They'd almost gotten that bastard Staynair in his own cathedral! And they'd come within inches of getting Sharleyan at Saint Agtha's. And then there'd been the man who'd made his own mission possible.

"Here you are, dearie," the barmaid said, sliding the fresh beer onto the table before him. She'd added a complimentary bowl of fried potato slices, and he smiled his thanks as he popped one of the fresh, piping hot slices into his mouth. In fact, it was hot enough he had to follow it rather quickly with an extinguishing swallow of beer.

"Good!" he told her, nodding enthusiastically even as he puffed out air to cool his scorched tongue and lips. "Hot, but good."

"Not the only thing here you could say that about," she told him with a saucy wink, and headed back off through the early evening crowd with an even saucier swing of her hips.

He smiled after her, but then the smile faded as he thought about how far he'd come. Not much further to go, though, he thought. Not much further at all.

He never would have admitted it to a soul, but he'd had more than a few reservations after his mission had been fully explained to him. Not about the mission itself, but about the complexity involved in getting him into position and preparing the way for it. The thought of returning to Charis completely on his own would have been enough to make anyone nervous. The fact that he was strictly prohibited from actually contacting any of the people who'd made his trip possible or contributed to the arrangements here in Charis had produced even more anxiety. He had to simply trust that each of the people responsible for moving him along would do his-or her, for all he knew, in some cases-part and that none of the details would go astray. The notion that such a complex set of arrangements could possibly work had seemed absurd, but as Archbishop Wyllym had pointed out, the Inquisition had been conducting similar operations for centuries. Perhaps not under conditions quite this extreme, but close enough to give them the expertise they needed once they'd realized what an efficient counter-spying organization they were up against here in Charis.

And there hadn't been all that many people involved, not really. It only seemed that way to him because he'd had to rely on them so blindly. But that very blindness had been his own best defense, because they hadn't known him, either. For that matter, they hadn't even known why they were doing what they'd been assigned to do. Not only that, every one of them had done his or her job exactly as Ainsail had-with no contact with anyone else in the service of Mother Church from the moment they or their instructions left Zion. No one would overhear any conversations or intercept any communications between them because there were no conversations or communications. There were only Ainsail and his fellow volunteers (none of whom had ever met, so far as he knew, even in Zion) and the detailed directions they'd been given before they were sent out.

When the Charisian powder mill blew up, Ainsail had been certain the entire operation had gone up in the same explosion. He had no idea who the Inquisition's contact inside the Charisian Navy was, yet it had been obvious there had to be one. And when he'd heard about the explosion-he'd still been in Emerald at the time, waiting for the brig to carry him for the final leg of his wearisome journey from Zion-he'd realized that whoever the contact was, he must have been unmasked somehow. And that meant he hadn't been able to complete his part of the preparations.

Ainsail had considered aborting the operation. He'd had that option, yet he'd known even as he'd considered the possibility that he wasn't going to do it. He hadn't come this far to turn back. And so he'd continued and, to his amazement, he'd found the promised supplies waiting exactly where he'd been told they'd be. Obviously, the Inquisition's contact had managed to complete his preparations, and Ainsail found himself wondering if perhaps the destruction of the powder mill had always been part of the plan. For that matter, had the contact been in the mill when it blew up? Could he have contrived the explosion with some sort of delay mechanism that let him escape before the blast?

Ainsail didn't know about that. It wasn't the way his part of the operation was supposed to work, but there was nothing that said other parts of it couldn't work differently. In fact, he rather hoped it had. Anyone who could have made Rakurai possible was far more valuable alive than dead.

I don't suppose I'll ever know, he reflected now, cautiously testing another of the potato slices to see if it had cooled enough. It had, and he chewed slowly, savoring the taste despite his scorched tongue. It was the best tasting fried potato he'd ever had, he thought, and then snorted in amusement. Sure it is! Then again, maybe it's not. And maybe the beer isn't really as good as I think it is, either. Maybe it's just that knowing how close I am is making me savor everything more than I ever did before.

He didn't know about that, and he wasn't going to waste his time worrying about it, either. He had two more five-days here in Tellesberg, and he intended to use those days wisely.

.IV.

Citadel of Schueler, The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands He didn't know if it was day or night.

They were careful about that. There was no daylight, no moonlight or stars, to help keep track of time, and they deliberately fed them-if you could call it "feeding"-at irregular, staggered intervals. No one was allowed to sleep uninterrupted, either. Buckets of ice-cold water hurled through the bars of their cells were enough to wake anyone up, although sometimes the guards varied their procedure. White-hot irons on the ends of long wooden shafts were quite effective at rousing sleepers, as well.

They'd been stripped of even the ragged remnants of their uniforms before they'd been consigned to their cages under the bowels of the Citadel of Schueler. It wasn't part of the original Temple complex, the Citadel; it had been built later, expressly for the Inquisition, and its walls were thick enough, its dungeons buried deep enough, that no one beyond its precincts could hear what happened within.

And that was where they'd been thrown into their cells, naked, deprived of any last vestige of human dignity. Beaten, starved, tortured at seemingly random and totally unpredictable intervals. Perhaps the most horrible thing of all, Gwylym Manthyr thought, was that they'd learned to sleep right through the shrieks of their tortured fellows. It wasn't that they'd become callous; it was that their bodies were so desperately starved for sleep ... and that those shrieks had become a routine part of the only hellish world they had left.

He looked down at his own hands in the dim lantern light. There were no nails on those scabbed, scarred fingers now, but he was luckier than some. Naiklos Vahlain-before his valiant heart finally failed him and he escaped-had been held down by two brawny inquisitors while a third had used an iron bar to methodically break every bone in his skilled, deft hands one joint at a time.

He wanted to put it down to nothing but rabid, unthinking cruelty, yet he knew it was far worse than that. All of it had a purpose, and not simply to "punish the heretics." It was designed not simply to break them, but to shatter them. To stretch their souls upon the rack, not just their bodies, until their faith in themselves, the courage of their convictions, whatever it was that let them defy Zhaspahr Clyntahn, shattered into a million fragments that sifted through their broken fingers to the floors of their cells. It was designed to turn them into shambling scarecrows who would mouth whatever lies were dictated to them when they were paraded before the faithful, if only they would finally be allowed to die.

It was hard, he thought. Hard to maintain his faith, his trust in a God who could let something like this happen. Hard to sustain his belief in the importance of standing for what was just in defense of what he knew was true and his love for his homeland. All of that seemed far away, dream-like, from this unchanging, lantern-lit slice of hell. Not quite real, like something out of a fever delirium. Yet he clung to that faith and belief, that love, anyway, and their unlikely ally was hate. A bitter, burning, driving hate such as he'd never imagined he might feel. It filled his tortured, half-broken body with a savage determination which lifted him above himself. Which drove him onward, despite the sheer stupidity of surviving another single day, because it refused to let him stop.

He heard iron-nailed boots clashing their way across the stone floor, and the sliding sound of someone's feet trailing across it as the inquisitors hauled him along by his arms. He stepped closer to the front wall of his tiny cell, holding on to the bars despite the way the guards liked to hammer the prisoners' fingers against the unyielding steel with their truncheons, and peered through them. He heard the soft moaning as the inquisitors drew closer, and he recognized the prisoner being dragged to face whatever fresh torture had been devised for him.

"Hang on, Horys!" he called, his own voice hoarse and distorted. "Hang on, man!"

The words were pointless, and he knew it, yet Captain Braishair managed to raise his head as he heard them. It wasn't the meaning of the words that mattered; it was the fact of them. The evidence that even here there was still someone who cared, someone who knew Horys Braishair for who he was, not what the Inquisition was determined to make him.

"Aye, Sir Gwylym," Braishair half whispered. "I'll do that thing, and-"

He broke off with a strangled grunt, jerking spastically as the weighted truncheon slammed into his kidneys. The inquisitors didn't even bother to explain why the blow had landed; to do that would have been to acknowledge that their prisoners had some remnant of humanity that deserved explanations.

They dragged Braishair away, and a few moments later Manthyr heard fresh screams echo down the dungeon's stone-walled gut. He leaned his forehead against the bars, pressing his eyes closed, feeling the tears on his cheeks, and he was no longer ashamed of that "unmanly" wetness, for it was so utterly unimportant against what truly mattered.

The Inquisition wanted to break them all, but especially to break him, and he knew it. They wanted the Charisian admiral-Emperor Cayleb's own flag captain at Rock Point, and Crag Hook, and Darcos Sound-to admit his heresy. To denounce his emperor as a worshipper of Shan-wei, a liar and blasphemer, and the Church of Charis as a foul, schismatic perversion of God's true Church. They wanted that so badly they could taste it, and so they tortured his men even more cruelly than they tortured him. They ground his responsibility to them and his utter inability to do anything for them into his heart and soul and they expected that to break him in the end.

But they'd miscalculated, he thought, opening his eyes once more, staring at the stone wall opposite his cell. Even the Inquisition could do that, and it had, because they weren't going to break him. Not now, not next five-day, not next year-never. And the reason they weren't was what they'd done to his men. Men who would have died no matter what Sir Gwylym Manthyr did or did not "confess to" before the watching crowd of spectators. Men he couldn't have saved no matter what he'd done. Duty to his Emperor, faith in his God, loyalty to his Church-all of those things mattered, even here and even now. They were still part of him. But it was love and the hate-that molten, grinding hate which burned so much hotter for what they'd done to his men than for what they'd done to him-which would carry him to the bitter end. They could kill him, they could-and had, and would again-make him scream, but they could not-would not-break him.

"On your feet!" someone snarled, and a braided lash snaked between the bars to pop viciously against Manthyr's chest.

His head jerked up, and he shoved himself to his feet, the rough stone wall sliding against his spine as he leaned against it for support. He didn't scream, didn't even curse. He simply glared at the inquisitor beyond the bars. He didn't know the man's name; none of them had names, as far as he could tell. But this one wore an auxiliary bishop's ruby ring and his purple habit was trimmed in green and ecclesiastic white.

The bishop tucked his hands behind himself, considering the naked, scarred, burned, and welted man behind the bars.

"You're a stubborn bunch, aren't you?" he asked finally. "Stupid, too." He shook his head. "Surely you've realized by now that not even Shan-wei can save you from God's cleansing fire. Maybe you're so lost to God you refuse to turn back to Him even now, but why cling to the Mistress who's betrayed you the way she betrays everyone? Confess your sins and at least you can be spared further Question!"

Manthyr considered him for a moment, then spat. The spittle hit the bishop on the right cheek, and the man's hand rose slowly to wipe it off. There was something ineffably evil about his self-control, the fact that his expression never even changed. It was a statement that the cruelty he inflicted would be carefully measured, not the result of blind fury that might slip and allow its victim to escape into death too soon.

"That was foolish," he said flatly. "Do you think you're the only one who can pay for your stupidity?"

"Go to hell," Manthyr told him softly.

"Oh, no, not me." The inquisitor shook his head. "But you will, and by your example, you're dragging others with you."

He turned his head and nodded to someone beyond Manthyr's field of view, and two more Inquisitors dragged someone else down the passage. A third unlocked Manthyr's cell, and they hurled the barely breathing body into his cell with him. He went to his knees, staring in horror at Lainsair Svairsmahn, and the Schuelerite bishop's laugh was an icicle.

"That boy is clinging to your example," he said softly. "Look at what your bravado is costing him and see if it's still worth it."

He turned on his heel and stalked off, followed by the other Inquisitors, and Manthyr crouched over the body of his midshipman, staring at the seared and puckered wounds where the boy's eyes had been. Svairsmahn was a brittle bundle of bones and skin, so broken and scarred it was almost impossible to believe he was still alive. But that thin chest continued to rise and fall, and Manthyr laid a gentle, shaking hand on his cheek.

Svairsmahn flinched, one hand rising weakly in futile self-defense, but Manthyr gripped its wrist.

"It's me, Master Svairsmahn," he said.

"Sir Gwylym?" He could hardly hear the thready whisper and he bent closer, his ear inches from the midshipman's mouth.

"I'm here, Lainsair."

"I ... tried, Sir. I tried." Svairsmahn's blind face turned towards him. "I tried, but ... they made me. I ... I told them. Told them ... you worshipped ... Shan-wei. I'm sorry ... Sir. I tried. I tried."

"Shush, Lainsair." Manthyr's voice broke as he lifted that slight, maimed, broken body in his arms. He held the boy to his chest, cradling him as he might have a far younger child and urging his head down against his shoulder. "Shush. It's all right."

"But ... but I lied," Svairsmahn whispered. "I lied ... about you. About the Emperor. About ... everybody ... just so they'd stop."

"Don't think about that now," Manthyr said into his ear, feeling the fresh tears on his own cheeks. "You're not alone. You think no one else's told them what they wanted to hear? Look what they've done to you, Lainsair. Look what they've done. Of course you told them what they wanted you to."

"Shouldn't." Svairsmahn tried to shake his head again against Manthyr's shoulder. "Officers ... don't lie, Sir."

"I know. I know, Lainsair, but it's all right."

Manthyr settled into a sitting position, Svairsmahn in his lap, and stared through the bars of his cell. The boy couldn't survive much more, yet Manthyr knew why the bishop had left him here. Because they were going to come back, and they were going to torture this broken, dying boy again in front of him until he told them what they wanted to hear.

But they've made a mistake, Lainsair, he thought. This time, they've made a mistake.

He cradled the boy's head between his half-crippled but still strong hands, thanking God with all his heart for their captors' mistake, and leaned forward until his forehead touched the midshipman's.

"Listen to me, Lainsair," he said. "This is important. Are you listening?"

"Yes, Sir Gwylym," Svairsmahn whispered.

"You've never done less than your duty as a king's officer, Master Svairsmahn," Manthyr said firmly, his voice strong and calm despite the tears. "Not in all the time I've known you. What you may have said to them, what you may have told them because they tortured you, can't change that. And it can't change who you are, who you've always been, either. I'm proud of you, Lainsair. You've done well, and I'm proud of you. It's been my highest honor to serve with you."

"Thank you, Sir." He could scarcely hear the wisp of a voice, but the boy's cracked lips moved in a ghost of a smile.

"No, Lainsair." Manthyr raised the midshipman's head far enough to kiss the boy's forehead and adjusted his grip with careful, loving firmness.

"No, Lainsair; thank you," he said, his voice soft ... and his hands twisted sharply.

.V.

The Gulf of Jharas, Desnairian Empire "My respects to the Admiral, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk, and inform him that Admiral Shain has hoisted the signal."

"Aye, aye, Sir. Your respects to Admiral Yairley and Admiral Shain has hoisted the signal."

Aplyn-Ahrmahk was pleased by how calm his voice sounded, under the circumstances, and as he saluted and headed for the ladder, the old saying about things changing and yet remaining the same ran through his mind. He could remember hundreds of times Midshipman Aplyn-Ahrmahk had been sent below with messages for Captain Yairley, and here he was doing it again, except that this message was rather more important than most of those others. Well that, and the fact that Ensign Aplyn-Ahrmahk was taking the message to Admiral Yairley, and he'd been chosen not because he happened to be conveniently available but because he'd become Admiral Sir Dunkyn Yairley's flag lieutenant.

On the face of it, he was ridiculously junior for such a post. On the other hand, he'd served under Sir Dunkyn for the better part of four years now, and the Navy was as strapped for experienced officers as it was for seamen, especially in the wake of its current expansion. It was unlikely there was a lieutenant equally familiar with the admiral's ways running around loose. And he had far more experience than his sixteen years (well, sixteen years in another couple of five-days) might have suggested. And, for that matter, he'd be a lieutenant on that birthday of his. So he supposed it all actually made sense, even though he'd discovered that even after Sir Dunkyn's intensive tutelage, the social skills that normally went with his position were not precisely his strongest suit. Well, he'd just have to make up for it by working on them still harder.

He reached the paneled door to Admiral Yairley's day cabin. It was, in fact, the same cabin which had belonged to Captain Yairley, since Destiny was not, unfortunately, one of the later and larger galleons which had been built with separate flag quarters.

Another example of things staying the same, he thought, nodding to the Marine sentry and then rapping sharply. For a moment he thought his knock hadn't been heard, but then a voice answered.

"Enter!"

Aplyn-Ahrmahk took off his hat, tucked it even more carefully than usual under his left arm, and ran straightening fingers through his tousled hair before he stepped through the door. Not that he was worried about the admiral's reaction to his appearance. Oh no, not his....

Sylvyst Raigly, Sir Dunkyn's valet and steward, had become awesomely aware of his employer's exalted status the instant the brand-new admiral's streamer had been broken from Destiny's mizzen. Raigly was only about thirty years old, well read, and always well dressed and carefully groomed, but when he decided to feel waspish, he was capable of the most icily polite, formal, biting, exquisitely nasty set downs Aplyn-Ahrmahk had ever encountered. The ensign had never heard him utter a single overtly inappropriate or discourteous word ... which didn't prevent Raigly from vivisecting anyone unfortunate enough to rouse his ire. He was also a crack pistol shot and an excellent swordsman, and one of his shipboard duties had been to instruct the midshipmen in sword work. He'd done a great deal to improve Aplyn-Ahrmahk's combat skills, and the two of them were friends ... which wouldn't save Aplyn-Ahrmahk's neck if he came into the admiral's presence with his tunic unbuttoned or a hat on his head below decks.

There was no sharp-eyed and ominous valet waiting for him this time, however; merely an admiral. Well, an admiral and his secretary, who was far less terrifying than any valet!

"Yes, Hektor?" Yairley asked, looking up from the chart he'd been contemplating while he dictated a letter to Trumyn Lywshai, his newly appointed flag secretary.

"Captain Lathyk's compliments, Sir. Admiral Shain has hoisted the signal."

"I see."

Yairley glanced back at the chart once more, then straightened. He stepped to the skylight, looked up at the wind indicator, and nodded in satisfaction.

"I suppose we should go on deck, then," he said mildly, and looked at Lywshai. "We'll finish that correspondence later, Trumyn."

"Of course, Sir Dunkyn."

Lywshai was ten years older than Raigly, although he and the valet got along well. But whereas Raigly was as Charisian-born and bred as a man came (and looked it), Lywshai's hair was so dark a black it was almost blue and his eyes had a much more pronounced epicanthic fold. His father had been born in the Harchong Empire and sold to a Harchongian merchant captain by the local baron as a "cabin boy" when he was only seven. Shaintai Lywshai seldom spoke about those years, although they'd left deep and painful scars, and not just of the body. But the captain who'd bought him had decided to dabble in piracy as a sideline and picked the wrong galleon as a prize. Which was how Shaintai had ended up in Tellesberg at the age of thirteen, adopted by the captain of the galleon his previous (deceased) owner had attempted to capture. And which also explained the ferocious loyalty of Shaintai's son Trumyn and the entire extensive Lywshai family to Charis and the Charisian crown.

"Do you want me to wait until you come back below?" Lywshai asked now. "Or should I start making the fair copies of your other letters for your signature?"

"Go ahead and finish up the ones I've already dictated," Yairley decided. "I don't believe we'll be able to get very much done on the rest of it until this little affair is over, though."