"The plot thickens," Yairley murmured at sight of the "messenger's" seniority.

"Commander Jynkyns, Sir Dunkyn," Aplyn-Ahrmahk said.

"I see. You have a dispatch for me, Commander?"

"Yes, Sir. I do." Jynkyns saluted, then opened an attache case and extracted a heavy canvas envelope. A paper label was stitched across the open end to hold it closed, and he laid it on Yairley's desk.

The admiral looked at it for a moment, then dipped his pen in the inkwell and scribbled his name across the label.

"Very good, Sir Dunkyn. Thank you," Jynkyns said, retrieving the envelope and examining the signature briefly but closely. Then he drew a small knife and carefully slit the stitches which had closed the envelope. There was another smaller envelope inside, and he withdrew it and handed it to Yairley before returning the outer envelope to his attache case.

"I was instructed to inform you, Sir Dunkyn, that Admiral White Ford requests an estimate of your readiness to deal with this matter within the next two hours."

"I see." Yairley weighed the envelope in his fingers. It didn't seem all that heavy, but then again, orders never did ... until the time came to carry them out.

"Hektor, would you please see Commander Jynkyns back to his boat?"

"Of course, Sir Dunkyn."

"Thank you. And, Commander," Yairley's gaze moved back to Jynkyns-"inform Admiral White Ford that I'll report to him as quickly as possible."

"I will, Sir Dunkyn. Thank you."

The commander saluted again and withdrew, escorted by Aplyn-Ahrmahk. Yairley watched them go, and when the cabin door closed behind them, opened the second envelope, extracted the half-dozen sheets of paper, and began to read.

"Yes, Sir Dunkyn?" Aplyn-Ahrmahk said, stepping back into the day cabin ten minutes later. "Sylvyst said you wanted to see me?"

The lieutenant, Yairley observed with some amusement, was clearly on fire with curiosity about the mysterious dispatch. It was equally obvious that nothing on earth could have prevailed upon Aplyn-Ahrmahk to admit his curiosity.

"I did," he acknowledged. "I think we're going to be a bit busy for the next hour or so, Hektor."

"Of course, Sir. How?"

"I am requested and required to report to Admiral White Ford within no more than two hours' time the squadron's readiness state and whether or not we can depart Thol Bay with the evening tide."

Aplyn-Ahrmahk's eyes widened slightly. Destiny had only officially left dockyard hands the day before, and-as always happened these days-she'd hemorrhaged manpower while she was being repaired. Captain Lathyk was almost seventy men short of a full complement, and the chance of his coming up with that many men in the next six hours ranged from non-existent to something somewhat less than that. Then there was the minor problem of how they provisioned and stored the ship in that same six hours ... which, frankly, sounded impossible to him. There could, however, be only one possible response from any king's officer to such an order.

"Of course, Sir," Lieutenant Aplyn-Ahrmahk said calmly. "I'll just go and find the Flag Captain, shall I?"

NOVEMBER,.

YEAR OF GOD 895.

.I.

HMS Destiny, 54, Schueler Strait, and Tellesberg Palace, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis "Gentlemen, thank you for coming."

Most of the faces around the polished wooden table in Sir Dunkyn Yairley's day cabin were worn with weariness, grooved with lines of fatigue, and adorned with at least a day or two of stubble. Yairley, however, was clean-shaven and brisk, his eyes bright, without any sign of exhaustion, which was something of a miracle under the circumstances.

Somehow (and most of his captains didn't know how, really, even now) his squadron had made its departure time, sailing on the evening tide almost exactly five five-days earlier. Since then, for reasons none of them knew, Yairley had driven them as if Shan-wei herself were in pursuit and gaining steadily. He'd informed them that he intended to be off Schueler Strait within twenty-eight days, which most of them had regarded as an outright impossibility. Instead, he'd done it in only twenty-six, which had required him to maintain an average speed of almost eight and a half knots. Topgallants, royals, staysails, studding sails-he'd set every scrap of canvas that would draw, and refused to reduce sail until he absolutely had to. He'd even ignored the Navy tradition of "reefing down," reducing sail and taking a precautionary reef in his topsails every night, lest some squall, unseen in the darkness, overtake a ship under too much canvas and rip the masts out of her or even drive her bodily under.

He hadn't told them why, he'd only told them how and then driven them like a slave master, and to their total astonishment, they'd actually done it. Now the squadron's ships lay hove-to in the mouth of the strait, their crews sunning on deck despite the brisk, chill weather while they luxuriated in the brief, well-earned (and badly needed) respite and all his captains repaired aboard Destiny where, just perhaps, they might finally learn what all of this was about.

One captain was missing. Captain Daivyn Shailtyn's Thunderbolt had lost her main topgallant and royal masts when she'd been hit by a sudden gust before she could reduce sail. Some of Yairley's officers had expected him to take Shailtyn's head off for letting that happen, but the admiral wasn't a fool. He knew whose fault it was, and so he'd simply signaled Shailtyn to continue at his best speed to a rendezvous point fifty miles south of Sarm Bank in the approaches to Sarmouth Keep, although why anyone in his right mind would want to go there was something of a puzzle.

Hopefully, they were about to discover that puzzle's answer.

"I'm sure all of you have wondered what could have possessed me to push our people this hard," Sir Dunkyn said, as his steward and flag lieutenant silently and efficiently provided each captain with a snifter of brandy. "I can now tell you at least part of the reason, although there are other portions of our orders which must remain confidential for a while longer."

The captains glanced at each other. Secret orders weren't exactly unheard of, but they were more heard of than actually seen. And orders whose contents couldn't be shared aboard vessels hundreds of miles from anywhere in particular were even rarer. Who was going to overhear any careless talk out here, after all?

Yairley watched those thoughts go through his officers' minds, then cleared his throat gently, recalling their attention to him.

"The squadron is ordered to attack, seize, and destroy Sarmouth Keep," he told them. "This isn't simply a raid, Gentlemen; it's an all-out attack which will leave nothing but rubble where the fortifications are now. In addition, it will include the seizure of any shipping we may encounter in Sarmouth itself and the destruction of the city's docks, wharves, and warehouses."

There was silence for a moment, and then Captain Lathyk took a sip of brandy and broke it.

"Excuse me, Sir Dunkyn, but may we know why we're to destroy Sarmouth?"

His tone could not have been more respectful, yet his expression made it clear he couldn't think of any conceivable reason for the operation. Sarmouth, in the Earldom of Charlz, was, admittedly, the second-largest seaport of the Kingdom of Delferahk, but that wasn't saying much. The Sarm River, which emptied into the Southern Ocean at Sarmouth, was over three hundred miles long, flowing all the way from the Sarman Mountains in the Duchy of Yarth. It was navigable (by anything larger than a rowboat, at any rate) for only about a third of its length, however, and Sarmouth itself was little more than a sleepy fishing port with occasional delusions of grandeur when a particularly ambitious Earl of Charlz started trying (usually with a depressing lack of success) to attract trade away from Ferayd. At the moment, it was probably even more of a ghost town than Ferayd, thanks to the systematic Charisian destruction of the Delferahkan merchant marine and Clyntahn's embargo. Nor was Sarm Keep any more impressive than the "city" it had been built to protect.

"I can't answer that question completely at this time, Rhobair," Yairley said after a moment. "I will tell you, however-and this is not to be discussed aboard your ships, even with your first officers-that the primary purpose of the attack is to serve as a distraction. While everyone's attention is hopefully focused on our noisy efforts to properly wreck everything in sight, we'll be sending a small party up the Sarm River in boats. The reason I say this isn't to be discussed outside this cabin is that I want none of our men who might be going ashore during the raid itself to know anything about it. I trust their hearts completely; I'm a little less confident about their tongues." He smiled briefly. "I want no careless comments ashore to alert any Delferakhan that we might be hanging about to recover those boats."

The captains glanced at each other again. It was amazing how gaining additional information hadn't left them any less in the dark.

"I realize you're all puzzled by the purpose of our orders," Yairley continued. "I promise I'll inform you more fully as soon as my own instructions permit. In the meantime, however, it's vital that we carry out our attack no later than twelve days from today." One or two sets of eyes widened, and he smiled thinly. "Perhaps you can see now why haste has been so imperative."

"I think you could safely say that, Sir Dunkyn, yes," Lathyk said dryly, and two of the others chuckled. Even at the insane rate of speed Yairley had maintained, it would require another six or seven days just to reach Sarmouth, and there was no guarantee they'd be able to maintain that speed. In fact, the odds were against it.

"I thought I could," Yairley said in an equally dry tone. "Still, I believe we can probably spend the time to properly enjoy the dinner Sylvyst promises me will be the high point of our entire voyage before we get back underway. I've taken the liberty of informing your first officers by signal that you'll be remaining aboard to dine, and I'm confident they'll take the opportunity to see to it that your people are properly fed, as well. Of course, we'll be driving as hard as ever as soon as you've returned to your ships. I'm sure-Charisians being Charisians-that there'll be quite a bit of grumbling among your ships' companies when the people realize that. However, you may inform them that Their Majesties have graciously consented to pay head money for every member of the garrison taken into temporary custody and to pay prize money for destroyed vessels and warehoused goods, based upon a fair valuation." It was his turn to chuckle. "I know it won't be much, but I also know Charisian seamen. Telling them they'll have a few extra marks rattling around in their pockets if they do well always seems to cheer them up, doesn't it?"

"What is it, Merlin?"

Cayleb Ahrmahk's question was broken in the middle by a prodigious yawn. He pushed himself up in bed, careful to avoid disturbing Sharleyan, and grimaced as he looked out the bedchamber window.

"What time is it?" he demanded in a mildly ominous tone.

"It'll be dawn in another hour," Merlin replied over the com earplug.

"I'm going to assume there's a good reason I'm not still blissfully asleep," Cayleb remarked, climbing out of bed and shrugging into a light robe as he walked across the room and sat on the windowsill, looking out at the peaceful predawn garden. "I don't think I'm quite as ready to assume there's a good reason you're not still blissfully asleep, however. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we in the middle of that 'compulsory down time' you're supposed to take every night? Do I have to go ahead and sic Owl on you to report you when you don't take it?"

"Actually, we're not halfway through it," Merlin replied with scrupulous accuracy. "We're closer to two-thirds of the way through it, if you want to be persnickety about it."

"Oh, that's much better." Cayleb's lips twitched, but he firmed them back up in a disapproving frown. "There was a reason I promulgated that particular arrogant imperial decree, if you'll recall, Seijin Merlin. And it just happens we have several other people now who can cover things while you 'sleep.'"

"That's true," Merlin admitted. "In rebuttal, however, I'll just point out that all of them happen to be in the same time zone at the moment. So I told Owl that if anything urgent comes up in the middle of the night, he's supposed to give it to me rather than wake up one of you flesh-and-bloods-who need actual sleep, not just the opportunity to rest your diodes. Besides, I've gotten quite a bit of rest since I got back to the Cave, you know. In fact, I'm getting too damned much rest at the moment."

Cayleb folded his arms and glowered at the garden, looking for some logical way to attack Merlin's reasoning. Unfortunately, none occurred to him.

"All right," he said finally. "You got me. This time. Now, what's so damned urgent you decided to wake this flesh-and-blood up at this godforsaken hour? I could've gotten at least another solid hour of sleep, you know."

"Owl's just spotted what looks an awful lot like it must be Clyntahn's assassination team." Any trace of humor had disappeared from Merlin's tone, and Cayleb sat up straighter, his eyes narrowing. "I'm not absolutely positive, but we've planted a couple of parasites on them. If these are the people we're looking for-and I can't think of why anyone else would be traveling to Delferahk from the Temple Lands this time of year, especially with snow all over the roads in both Havens-they're bound to say something to confirm it."

"What makes Owl think this could be them? Aside from the fact that they're riding through the snow and ice, that is?"

"There are fifteen of them, all in a single party, and twelve of them have Charisian accents. They're making it a point to stop at Church hostels along the way, and when they do, they make sure the staff hears those accents of theirs. And they're dropping the occasional Charisian mark when they pay their tab before they head on down the road. And, just as another little indicator that they're probably the people we're looking for, they're being very careful to let people know-or think, anyway-that they came out of the Republic. Obviously Clyntahn's decided that suggesting active collusion between Lord Protector Greyghor and Charis may give his operation there an extra boost. Unfortunately, whatever they may be suggesting to the people they meet along the way, Owl has the same crew getting off a Harchong-registry ship-whose immediately previous port of call was in Malansath, not the Republic-in the Duchy of Malikai two five-days ago. Now, I suppose really sneaky Siddarmarkian assassins might have decided to travel a couple of thousand miles west overland to get aboard a ship in the Harchong Empire and then sail back east for fifteen hundred miles before they head south for their real destination, but ... I don't know, Cayleb. It seems a little roundabout to me."

"Was Nimue Alban as much of a smartass as you are?" Cayleb inquired pleasantly.

"Probably not. She was a lot more junior than I am, of course."

"Oh, of course," Cayleb agreed with a nod, and rubbed his chin for a moment, thinking.

"How did you put all of that together?" he asked after a moment. "I'm not complaining, you understand, but...?"

He let his voice trail off and sensed Merlin's distant shrug.

"It's not really all that surprising. I've had Owl conducting continual reconnaissance of all three continents. I don't want him wasting processor power trying to actually monitor that much area on any real-time basis, but he's got a sub-routine set up to store the imagery in Romulus' computer core as it comes in. That way it's available for us to backtrack just about anything we want to if it turns out there's a reason we should. Things like individual horsemen don't even show up in the raw imagery, but once he starts enhancing and manipulating it, he can turn up a surprising amount of detail and do a lot about backtracking targets once they've been pointed out to him.

"He's beginning to show more initiative within his assigned parameters, too. Bynzhamyn and I instructed him to cover inns and hostels in Delferahk with parasites and listen for key words that might identify the assassins, and he decided on his own to place parasites in the Temple hostels on the main roads into Delferahk from Sodar and the Desnairian Empire, as well. Then he started moving farther back up the line without mentioning it to us. One of the ostlers in a hostel he'd wired for sound waited until this particular group had left and then described them as 'Langhorne-damned Charisians, probably heretics the lot of them,' to one of his coworkers. That popped through Owl's filters and he started going through the data-including what he had of the group this fellow was describing talking to each other from his other parasites-until he could locate and positively ID them. Once he had them, he simply ran back through the recorded imagery, backtracking them until the first time he picked them up. Which, as I say, was in Malikai. He was able to track the ship back to Malansath, but it looks like they must have gone aboard during one of the blizzards that rolled through there last month."

"It sounds to me like we got lucky," Cayleb said.

"We got lucky because Owl's getting better. Still, you're right. On the other hand, we've got a lot denser fence along the Delferahkan border, and Owl's keeping a real-time watch over Talkyra itself. If we hadn't picked them up now, we'd have picked them up then. I think."

"You hope, you mean," Cayleb snorted. He thought again for several more seconds. "So what does this imply for your plans?" he asked after a moment.

"My biggest concern is the fact that they're moving sooner than we thought they would-or faster, anyway," Merlin pointed out. "By my calculations, they'll reach Talkyra sometime around the fifteenth, a good two days earlier than we'd allowed for. For that matter, Yairley's squadron isn't even supposed to hit Sarm Keep until the thirteenth. I realize he's a little ahead of schedule, but whether or not the wind will let him stay that way is another question. And then there's the minor fact that nobody in Talkyra's heard back from us yet." Cayleb sensed another of those distant shrugs. "I think I'm going to have to go ahead and move down to the Sunthorns to be a little closer to the scene, just in case. And it's probably time I went and had that conversation with Earl Coris, too. In a manner of speaking, of course."

.II.

Royal Palace, City of Talkyra, Kingdom of Delferahk Phylyp Ahzgood was a light sleeper.

He always had been, and his tendency to sleep less soundly than most had only grown stronger over his years as a spymaster. Hektor Daykyn had teased him about it, once upon a time, pointing out that it was probably the result of an increasingly guilty conscience. The Earl of Coris had responded that it had far less to do with guilty consciences than with a growing familiarity with-and appreciation for-the versatility of assassins.

Whatever the reason, he tended to wake up quickly and completely ... and without moving.

Now he lay very still and let one hand steal slowly, slowly under his pillow. Its fingers settled around the dagger hilt, and his nostrils flared as he drew a deep, silent breath and prepared to fling himself out of the bed and away from the direction from which he thought the slight sound had come.

"I do hope you're not planning to do anything hasty with that dagger, My Lord," a voice said politely out of the darkness. "This is a new tunic. I'd hate to have to have it patched so soon."

Coris froze, eyes narrowing. There was something about that voice. He couldn't quite put a finger on it, but he knew he'd heard it before somewhere....

"If you don't mind, My Lord, I'm going to strike a light," the voice continued as pleasantly as if it held conversations in someone else's bedchamber in the middle of the night on a regular basis.

"Go ahead," the earl invited, trying to match the voice's conversational tone.

"Thank you, My Lord," the voice replied.

There was a scratching sound, and then sudden, painful light smote Coris' eyes as something flared and guttered blindingly. He smelled a stink of brimstone, and despite himself, flipped out of bed and landed in a half crouch on its other side, dagger ready.

The intruder paid him no attention. He simply lifted the glass chimney from a lamp, lit the wick, and then blew out the flaming sliver of wood he'd used to do the lighting.

"What in Langhorne's name was that?" Coris demanded, his voice considerably more shaken than he would have liked.

"The Charisians call it a 'Shan-wei's candle,'" the other man said in an amused tone. "Personally, I think they could've come up with a more tactful name, given Vicar Zhaspahr's current attitude towards the Empire and the Church of Charis." He shrugged. "On the other hand, given how ... enthusiastically it takes fire-and the stink-it is an appropriate name, don't you think? Besides, I don't think they're especially concerned by the thought of hurting the Grand Inquisitor's tender feelings these days."

"Zhevons," Coris said, eyes going wide as his orderly memory put a face-and a name-together with the oddly familiar voice. "Ahbraim Zhevons."

"At your service," Zhevons acknowledged with a bow. It was clearly the same man and the same voice, but the accent and dialect had changed completely. Unlike the smuggler Coris had met earlier, this man could have stepped straight off a street-an expensive street-in Zion itself.

"What are you doing here? And how the hell did you get into my bedroom?" the earl demanded, his dagger still raised between them.

"As to how I got in, let's just say King Zhames' guards aren't the most alert lot in the world. In fact, they're pretty pathetic," Zhevons said in a judicious tone. "Sergeant Raimair's lads are much better than that, but there aren't very many of them. And, frankly, I'm a lot better at creeping around in the shadows than anyone else they're likely to meet."

"You are, are you?" Coris straightened from his crouch, lowering the dagger. "Given the fact that you're here, I'm inclined to take your word for that. On the other hand," his eyes narrowed, "that doesn't explain why you're here."

"You sent a message to Earl Gray Harbor last month," Zhevons said, his voice suddenly flat and serious, without the edge of humor which had marked it. "I'm the response."

The tip of an icicle ran down Coris' spine. It was an instant, instinctive reaction, born of his awareness of just how precarious his position truly was. But he pushed the instant hollowness of his stomach aside quickly. If Zhevons were an agent of the Inquisition, there'd be no point in any sort of elaborate charade designed to entrap him. And he was the man who'd delivered the messenger wyverns in the first place.