Tymythy Kwayle, with a gleaming, broad-headed ax in hand, stood by the riding bitts where the sheet anchor cable crossed them. Boatswain Symmyns himself stood by the larboard cable with an identical ax, both of them waiting for the order to cut the hawsers. If everything went according to plan, the moment the anchor cables were cut, the spring attached to the larboard cable would become her new anchor cable, pulling her stern, rather than her bow, around into the wind. With her yards already braced, the instant the wind came two points forward of the beam she could cut the spring, as well, and make sail close-hauled on the larboard tack, which would put her roughly on a course of south-southeast. She ought to be able to hold that heading clean back out of Scrabble Sound the way she'd come, if only the wind held steady. Or, for that matter, if it chose to back still further east towards the north. Of course, if it decided to veer to the west, instead....

Stop that, he told himself absently. The wind isn't really trying to kill you, Dunkyn, and you know it.

"Stand by to make sail! Lay aloft, topmen!"

The topmen hurried aloft, and he let them get settled into place. Then- "Man halliards and sheets! Man braces!"

Everything was ready, and he squared his shoulders.

"Cut the cables!"

The axes flashed. It took more than one blow to sever a cable six inches in diameter, but Kwayle and Symmyns were both powerfully muscled and only too well aware of the stakes this day. They managed it in no more than two or three blows each, and the freed hawsers went whipping out of the hawseholes like angry serpents at virtually the same moment.

Destiny fell off the wind almost instantly, leaning over to starboard as her stern came round to larboard. It was working, and- Then the spring parted.

Yairley felt the twanging shock as the line snapped, simply overpowered by the force of the sea striking the ship. She hadn't turned remotely far enough yet, and the sea took her, driving her towards the rocky beach waiting to devour her. For a moment, just an instant, Yairley's brain froze. He felt his ship rolling madly, starting to drive stern-first towards destruction, and knew there was nothing he could do about it.

Yet even as that realization hammered through him, he heard someone else snapping orders in a preposterously level voice which sounded remarkably like his own.

"Let fall fore topsail and course! Up fore topmast staysail!"

The crewmen who'd realized just as well as their captain that their ship was about to die didn't even hesitate as the bone-deep discipline of the Imperial Charisian Navy's ruthless drills and training took them by the throat, instead. They simply obeyed, and the fore topsail and course fell, and the topmast staysail rose, flapping and thundering on the wind.

"Sheet home! Weather braces haul! Back topsail and course!"

That was the critical moment, Yairley realized later. His entire ship's company had been anticipating the order to haul taut the lee braces, trimming the yards around to take the wind as the ship turned. That was what they'd been focused on, but now he was backing the sails; trimming them to take the wind from directly ahead, instead. Any hesitation, any confusion in the wake of the unexpected change in orders, would have been fatal, but Destiny's crew never faltered.

The yards shifted, the sails pressed back against the mast, and Destiny began moving through the water-not forward, but astern-while the sudden pressure drove her head still further round to starboard.

Destiny backed around on her heel-slowly, clumsily canvas volleying and thundering, spray everywhere, the deck lurching underfoot. She wallowed drunkenly from side to side, but she was moving astern even as she drifted rapidly towards the beach. Sir Dunkyn Yairley had imposed his will upon his ship, and he stared up at the masthead weathervane, waiting, praying his improvised anchor hadn't been fouled, judging his moment.

And then- "Let fall the mizzen topsail!" he shouted the moment the wind came abaft the starboard beam at last. "Starboard your helm! Off forward braces! Off fore topmast staysail sheets! Lee braces haul! Brace up! Shift the fore topmast staysail! Let fall main topsail and main course! Sheet home! Main topsail and course braces haul!"

The orders came with metronome precision, as if he'd practiced this exact maneuver a hundred times before, drilled his crew in it daily. The mizzen topsail filled immediately, arresting the ship's sternward movement, and the forward square sails and fore topmast staysail were trimmed round. Then the main topsail and main course blossomed, as well, and suddenly Destiny was moving steadily, confidently, surging through the confused seas on the larboard tack with torrents of spray bursting above her bow. As she gathered way, the floating tubs of her improvised rudder settled back into their designed positions, and she answered the helm with steadily increasing obedience.

"Done it, lads!" someone shouted. "Three cheers for the Captain!"

HMS Destiny was a warship of the Imperial Charisian Navy, and the ICN had standards of discipline and professionalism other navies could only envy. Discipline and professionalism which, for just an instant, vanished into wild, braying cheers and whistles as their ship forged towards safety.

Sir Dunkyn Yairley rounded on his ship's company, his expression thunderous, but he found himself face-to-face with a broadly grinning first lieutenant and an ensign who was capering on deck and snapping the fingers of both hands.

"And what sort of an example is this, Master Lathyk?! Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk?!" the captain barked.

"Not a very good one, I'm afraid, Sir," Lathyk replied. "And I beg your pardon for it. I'll sort the men out shortly, too, Sir, I promise. But for now, let them cheer, Sir! They deserve it. By God, they deserve it!"

He met Yairley's eyes steadily, and the captain felt his immediate ire ease just a bit as the realization of what they'd just accomplished began to sink into him, as well.

"I had the quartermaster of the watch time it, Sir," Aplyn-Ahrmahk said, and Yairley looked at him. The ensign had stopped capering about like a demented monkey-lizard, but he was still grinning like a lunatic.

"Three minutes!" the young man said. "Three minutes-that's how long it took you, Sir!"

Aplyn-Ahrmahk's eyes gleamed with admiration, and Yairley gazed back at him for a moment, then, almost against his will, he laughed.

"Three minutes you say, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk?" He shook his head. "I fear you're wrong about that. I assure you from my own personal experience that it took at least three hours."

MARCH,.

YEAR OF GOD 895.

.I.

Ehdwyrd Howsmyn's foundry, Earldom of High Rock, Kingdom of Old Charis The blast furnace screamed, belching incandescent fury against the night, and the sharpness of coal smoke blended with the smell of hot iron, sweat, and at least a thousand other smells Father Paityr Wylsynn couldn't begin to identify. The mingled scent of purpose and industry hung heavy in the humid air, catching lightly at the back of his throat even through the panes of glass.

He stood gazing out Ehdwyrd Howsmyn's office window into the hot summer darkness and wondered how he'd come here. Not just the trip to this office, but to why he was here ... and to what was happening inside his own mind and soul.

"A glass of wine, Father?" Howsmyn asked from behind him, and the priest turned from the window.

"Yes, thank you," he agreed with a smile.

For all his incredible (and steadily growing) wealth, Howsmyn preferred to dispense with servants whenever possible, and the young intendant watched him pour with his own hands. The ironmaster extended one of the glasses to his guest, then joined him beside the window, looking out over the huge sprawl of the largest ironworks in the entire world.

It was, Wylsynn admitted, an awesome sight. The furnace closest to the window (and it wasn't actually all that close, he acknowledged) was only one of dozens. They fumed and smoked like so many volcanoes, and when he looked to his right he could see a flood of molten iron, glowing with a white heart of fury, flowing from a furnace which had just been tapped. The glare of the fuming iron lit the faces of the workers tending the furnace, turning them into demon helpers from the forge of Shan-wei herself as the incandescent river poured into the waiting molds.

Howsmyn's Delthak foundries never slept. Even as Wylsynn watched, draft dragons hauled huge wagons piled with coke and iron ore and crushed limestone along the iron rails Howsmyn had laid down, and the rhythmic thud and clang of water-powered drop hammers seemed to vibrate in his own blood and bone. When he looked to the east, he could see the glow of the lampposts lining the road all the way to Port Ithmyn, the harbor city the man who'd become known throughout Safehold as "The Ironmaster of Charis" had built on the west shore of Lake Ithmyn expressly to serve his complex. Port Ithmyn was over four miles away, invisible with distance, yet Wylsynn could picture the lanterns and torches illuminating its never-silent waterfront without any difficulty at all.

If Clyntahn could see this he'd die of sheer apoplexy, Wylsynn reflected, and despite his own internal doubts-or possibly even because of them-the thought gave him intense satisfaction. Still....

"I can hardly believe all you've accomplished, Master Howsmyn," he said, waving his wineglass at everything beyond the window. "All this out of nothing but empty ground just five years ago." He shook his head. "You Charisians have done a lot of amazing things, but I think this is possibly the most amazing of all."

"It wasn't quite 'nothing but empty ground,' Father," Howsmyn disagreed. "Oh," he grinned, "it wasn't a lot more than empty ground, that's true, but there was the village here. And the fishing village at Port Ithmyn. Still, I'll grant your point, and God knows I've plowed enough marks back into the soil, as it were."

Wylsynn nodded, accepting the minor correction. Then he sighed and turned to face his host squarely.

"Of course, I suspect the Grand Inquisitor would have a few things to say if he could see it," he said. "Which is rather the point of my visit."

"Of course it is, Father," Howsmyn said calmly. "I haven't added anything beyond those things you and I have discussed, but you'd be derelict in your duties if you didn't reassure yourself of that. I think it's probably too late to carry out any inspections tonight, but tomorrow morning we'll look at anything you want to see. I would ask you to take a guide-there are some hazardous processes out there, and I'd hate to accidentally incinerate the Archbishop's Intendant-but you're perfectly welcome to decide for yourself what you want to look at or examine, or which of my supervisors or shift workers you'd care to interview." He inclined his head in a gesture which wasn't quite a bow. "You've been nothing but courteous and conscientious under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, Father. I can't ask for more than that."

"I'm glad you think so. On the other hand, I have to admit there are times I wonder-worry about-the slash lizard you've saddled here." Wylsynn waved his glass at the fire-lit night beyond the window once more. "I know nothing you've done violates the Proscriptions, yet the sheer scale of your effort, and the ... innovative way you've applied allowable knowledge is disturbing. The Writ warns that change begets change, and while it says nothing about matters of scale, there are those-not all of them Temple Loyalists, by any stretch-who worry that innovation on such a scale will inevitably erode the Proscriptions."

"Which must put you in a most difficult position, Father," Howsmyn observed.

"Oh, indeed it does." Wylsynn smiled thinly. "It helps that Archbishop Maikel doesn't share those concerns, and he's supported all of my determinations where your new techniques are concerned. I don't suppose that would make the Grand Inquisitor any more supportive, but it does quite a lot for my own peace of mind. And to be honest, the thought of how the Grand Inquisitor would react if he truly knew all you and the other 'innovators' here in Charis have been up to pleases me immensely. In fact, that's part of my problem, I'm afraid."

Howsmyn gazed at him for a moment, then cocked his head to one side.

"I'm no Bedardist, Father," he said almost gently, "but I'd be astonished if you didn't feel that way after what happened to your father and your uncle. Obviously, I don't know you as well as the Archbishop does, but I do know you better than many, I expect, after how closely we've worked together for the past couple of years. You're worried that your inevitable anger at Clyntahn and the Group of Four might cause you to overlook violations of the Proscriptions because of a desire to strike back at them, aren't you?"

Wylsynn's eyes widened with respect. It wasn't really surprise; Ehdwyrd Howsmyn was one of the smartest men he knew, after all. Yet the ironmaster's willingness to address his own concerns so directly, and the edge of compassion in Howsmyn's tone, were more than he'd expected.

"That's part of the problem," he acknowledged. "In fact, it's a very large part. I'm afraid it's not quite all of it, however. The truth is that I'm grappling with doubts of my own."

"We all are, Father." Howsmyn smiled crookedly. "I hope this won't sound presumptuous coming from a layman, but it seems to me that someone in your position, especially, would find that all but inevitable."

"I know." Wylsynn nodded. "And you're right. However," he inhaled more briskly, "at the moment I'm most interested in these 'accumulators' of yours. I may have seen the plans and approved them, yet there's a part of me that wants to actually see them." He smiled suddenly, the boyish expression making him look even younger than his years. "It's difficult, as you've observed, balancing my duty as Intendant against my duty as Director of the Office of Patents, but the Director in me is fascinated by the possibilities of your accumulators."

"I feel the same way," Howsmyn admitted with an answering gleam of humor. "And if you'll look over there"-he pointed out the window-"you'll see Accumulator Number Three beside that blast furnace."

Wylsynn's eyes followed the pointing index finger and narrowed as the furnace's seething glow illuminated a massive brickwork structure. As he'd just said, he'd seen the plans for Howsmyn's accumulators, but mere drawings, however accurately scaled, couldn't have prepared him for the reality.

The huge tower rose fifty feet into the air. A trio of blast furnaces clustered around it, and on the far side, a long, broad structure-a workshop of some sort-stretched into the night. The workshop was two stories tall, its walls pierced by vast expanses of windows to take advantage of natural light during the day. Now those windows glowed with internal light, spilling from lanterns and interspersed with frequent, far brighter bursts of glare from furnaces and forges within it.

"In another couple of months, I'll have nine of them up and running," Howsmyn continued. "I'd like to have more, honestly, but at that point we'll be getting close to the capacity the river can supply. I've considered running an aqueduct from the mountains to increase supply, but frankly an aqueduct big enough to supply even one accumulator would be far too expensive. It'd tie up too much manpower I need elsewhere, for that matter. Instead, I'm looking at the possibility of using windmills to pump from the lake, although there are some technical issues there, too."

"I can imagine," Wylsynn murmured, wondering what would happen if the accumulator he could see sprang a leak.

The use of cisterns and water tanks to generate water pressure for plumbing and sewer systems had been part of Safehold since the Creation itself, but no one had ever considered using them the way Ehdwyrd Howsmyn was using them. Probably, Wylsynn thought, because no one else had ever had the sheer audacity to think on the scale the ironmaster did.

Howsmyn's new blast furnaces and "puddling hearths" required levels of forced draft no one had ever contemplated before. He was driving them to unheard-of temperatures, recirculating the hot smoke and gases through firebrick flues to reclaim and utilize their heat in ways no one else ever had, and his output was exploding upward. And it was as if each new accomplishment only suggested even more possibilities to his fertile mind, like the massive new multi-ton drop hammers and the ever larger, ever more ambitious casting processes his workers were developing. All of which required still more power. Far more of it, in fact, than conventional waterwheels could possibly provide.

Which was where the concept for the "accumulator" had come from.

Waterwheels, as Howsmyn had pointed out in his patent and vetting applications, were inherently inefficient in several ways. The most obvious, of course, was that there wasn't always a handy waterfall where you wanted one. Holding ponds could be built, just as he'd done here at Delthak, but there were limits on the head of pressure one could build up using ponds, and water flows could fluctuate at the most inconvenient times. So it had occurred to him that if he could accumulate enough water, it might be possible to build his own waterfall, one that was located where he needed it and didn't fluctuate unpredictably. And if he was going to do that, he might as well come up with a more efficient design to use that artificial waterfall's power, as well.

In many ways, vetting the application in Wylsynn's role as Intendant had been simple and straightforward. Nothing in the Proscriptions of Jwo-jeng forbade any of Howsmyn's proposals. They all fell within the Archangel's trinity of acceptable power: wind, water, and muscle. True, nothing in the Writ seemed ever to have contemplated something on the scale Howsmyn had in mind, but that was scarcely a valid reason to deny him an attestation of approval. And wearing his hat as the Director of Patents, rather than his priest's cap, Wylsynn had been more than pleased to grant Howsmyn the patent he'd requested.

And tomorrow morning I'll inspect one of them with my own eyes, he reflected now. I hope I don't fall into it!

His lips twitched in an almost-smile. He was quite a good swimmer, yet the thought of just how much water a structure the size of the accumulator might hold was daunting. He'd seen the numbers-Dr. Mahklyn at the Royal College had calculated them for him-but they'd been only figures on a piece of paper then. Now he was looking at the reality of a "cistern" fifty feet tall and thirty-five feet on a side, all raised an additional thirty feet into the air. According to Mahklyn, it held close to half a million gallons of water. That was a number Wylsynn couldn't even have thought of before the introduction of the Arabic numerals which were themselves barely five years old. Yet all that water, and all the immense pressure it generated, was concentrated on a single pipe at the bottom of the accumulator-a single pipe almost wide enough for a man-well, a tall boy, at least-to stand in that delivered the accumulator's outflow not to a waterwheel but to something Howsmyn had dubbed a "turbine."

Another new innovation, Wylsynn thought, but still well within the Proscriptions. Jwo-jeng never said a wheel was the only way to generate water power, and we've been using windmills forever. Which is all one of his "turbines" really is, when all's said; it's just driven by water instead of wind.

Locating it inside the pipe, however, allowed the "turbine" to use the full force of all the water rushing through the pipe under all that pressure. Not only that, but the accumulator's design meant the pressure reaching the turbine was constant. And while it took a half-dozen conventional waterwheels just to pump enough water to keep each accumulator supplied, the outflow from the turbine was routed back to the holding ponds supplying and driving the waterwheels, which allowed much of it to be recirculated and reused. Now if Howsmyn's plans to pump water from the lake proved workable (as most of his plans seemed to do), his supply of water-and power-would be assured effectively year-round.

He's got his canals completed now, too, the priest reflected. Now that he can barge iron ore and coal directly all the way from his mines up in the Hanth Mountains he can actually use all of that power. Archangels only know what that's going to mean for his productivity!

It was a sobering thought, and the fresh increases in Delthak's output were undoubtedly going to make Ehdwyrd Howsmyn even wealthier. More importantly, they were going to be crucial to the Empire of Charis' ability to survive under the relentless onslaught of the Church of God Awaiting.

No, not the Church, Paityr, Wylsynn reminded himself yet again. It's the Group of Four, that murderous bastard Clyntahn and the rest. They're the ones trying to destroy Charis and anyone else who dares to challenge their perversion of everything Mother Church is supposed to stand for!

It was true. He knew it was true. And yet it was growing harder for him to make that separation as he watched everyone in the Church's hierarchy meekly bend the knee to the Group of Four, accepting Clyntahn's atrocities, his twisting of everything the Office of Inquisition was supposed to be and stand for. It was easy enough to understand the fear behind that acceptance. What had happened to his own father, his uncle, and their friends among the vicarate who'd dared to reject Clyntahn's obscene version of Mother Church was a terrible warning of what would happen to anyone foolish enough to oppose him now.

Yet how had he ever come to hold the Grand Inquisitor's office in the first place? How could Mother Church have been so blind, so foolish-so stupid and lost to her responsibility to God Himself-as to entrust Zhaspahr Clyntahn with that position? And where had the other vicars been when Clyntahn had Samyl and Hauwerd Wylsynn and the other members of their circle of reformers slaughtered? When he'd applied the Punishment of Schueler to vicars of Mother Church not for any error of doctrine, not any act of heresy, but for having the audacity to oppose him? None of the other vicars could have believed the Inquisition's preposterous allegations against their Reformist fellows, yet not one voice had been raised in protest. Not one, when Langhorne himself had charged Mother Church's priests to die for what they knew was true and right if that proved necessary.

He closed his eyes, listening to the shriek of the blast furnaces, feeling the disciplined energy and power pulsing around him, gathering itself to resist Clyntahn and the other men in far distant Zion who supported him, and felt the doubt gnawing at his certainty once again. Not at his faith in God. Nothing could ever touch that, he thought. But his faith in Mother Church. His faith in Mother Church's fitness as the guardian of God's plan and message to His children.

There were men fighting to resist the Group of Four's corruption, yet they'd been forced to do it outside Mother Church-in despite of Mother Church-and in the process they were taking God's message into other waters, subtly reshaping its direction and scope. Were they right to do that? Wylsynn's own heart cried out to move in the same directions, to broaden the scope of God's love in the same ways, but was he right to do that? Or had they all fallen prey to Shan-wei? Was the Mother of Deception using the Reformists' own better natures, their own yearning to understand God, to lead them into opposition to God? Into believing God must be wise enough to think the same way they did rather than accepting that no mortal mind was great enough to grasp the mind of God? That it was not their job to lecture God but rather to hear His voice and obey it, whether or not it accorded with their own desires and prejudices? Their own limited understanding of all He saw and had ordained?

And how much of his own yearning to embrace that reshaped direction stemmed from his own searing anger? From the rage he couldn't suppress, however hard he tried, when he thought about Clyntahn and the mockery he'd made of the Inquisition? From his fury at the vicars who'd stood idly by and watched it happen? Who even now acquiesced by their silence in every atrocity Clyntahn proclaimed in the name of his own twisted image of Mother Church, the Archangels, and God Himself?

And, terribly though it frightened and shamed him to ask the question, or even dare to admit he could feel such things, how much of it stemmed from his anger at God Himself, and at His Archangels, for letting this happen? If Shan-wei could seduce men through the goodness of their hearts, by subtly twisting their faith and their love for their fellow men and women, how much more easily might she seduce them through the dark poison of anger? And where might anger such as his all too easily lead?

I know where my heart lies, where my own faith lives, Paityr Wylsynn thought. Even if I wished to pretend I didn't, that I weren't so strongly drawn to the Church of Charis' message, there'd be no point trying. The truth is the truth, however men might try to change it, but have I become part of the Darkness in my drive to serve the Light? And how does any man try-what right does he have to try-to be one of God's priests when he can't even know what the truth in his own heart is ... or whether it springs from Light or Darkness?

He opened his eyes once more, looking out over the fiery vista of Ehdwyrd Howsmyn's enormous foundry complex, and worried.

.II.

HMS Royal Charis, 58, West Isle Channel, and Imperial Palace, Cherayth, Kingdom of Chisholm The cabin lamps swung wildly, sending their light skittering across the richly woven carpets and the gleaming wood of the polished table. Glass decanters sang a mad song of vibration, planking and stout hull timbers groaned in complaint, wind howled, rain beat with icy fists on the skylight, and the steady cannon-shot impacts as HMS Royal Charis' bow slammed into one tall, gray wave after another echoed through the plunging ship's bones.

A landsman would have found all of that dreadfully alarming, assuming seasickness would have allowed him to stop vomiting long enough to appreciate it. Cayleb Ahrmahk, on the other hand, had never suffered from seasickness, and he'd seen heavy weather bad enough to make the current unpleasantness seem relatively mild.

Well, maybe a bit more than relatively mild, if we're going to be honest, he admitted to himself.

It was only late afternoon, yet as he gazed out through the stern windows at the raging sea in Royal Charis' wake it could have been night. True, by the standards of his own homeland, night came early in these relatively northern latitudes in midwinter, but this was early even for the West Isle Channel. Solid cloud cover tended to do that, and if this weather was merely ... exceptionally lively, there was worse coming soon enough. The front rolling in across the Zebediah Sea to meet him was going to make this seem like a walk in the park.

"Lovely weather you've chosen for a voyage," a female voice no one else aboard Royal Charis could hear remarked in his ear.

"I didn't exactly choose it," he pointed out in reply. He had to speak rather loudly for the com concealed in his jeweled pectoral scepter to pick up his voice amid all the background noise, but no one was likely to overhear him in this sort of weather. "And your sympathy underwhelms me, dear."

"Nonsense. I know you, Cayleb. You're having the time of your life," Empress Sharleyan replied tartly from the study across the hall from their suite in the Imperial Palace. She sat in a comfortable armchair parked near the cast-iron stove filling the library with welcome warmth, and their infant daughter slept blessedly peacefully on her shoulder.

"He does rather look forward to these exhilarating moments, doesn't he?" another, deeper voice observed over the same com net.

"Ganging up on me, Merlin?" Cayleb inquired.