By Heresies Distressed (83 page)

“Watch,” he said, and raised the “communicator” towards his mouth.

“Owl,” he said.

“Yes, Lieutenant Commander?” a voice replied out of the “security communicator” after the briefest of pauses.

“Owl, I'm adding Empress Sharleyan, Emperor Cayleb, and Archbishop Maikel to the list of authorized network users. And while I'm thinking about it, let's add Sergeant Seahamper, as well, just in case. Please confirm.”

“Yes, Lieutenant Commander,” the voice said. “Empress Sharleyan, Emperor Cayleb, Archbishop Maikel, and Sergeant Seahamper have now been added to the authorized network users.”

“Good. That's all, Owl.”

“Yes, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Was that
really
that ‘computer' thing of yours?” Sharleyan demanded in a delighted tone.

“I'm afraid so,” Merlin said, shaking his head with a crooked smile. “As computer AIs go, he's not the sharpest piece of chalk in the box, but the manufacturer's instruction manual promises me he'll get better.”

“He sounds miraculous enough to
me
as it is!”

“He may right now, but just wait until you have to explain something outside his normal operating parameters to him.” Merlin closed his eyes and gave a deliberate shudder. Then he opened his eyes again and handed her the device.

She took it rather gingerly, and he smiled reassuringly.

“Don't worry, Your Grace. I'll go over it all with you again, before I leave. And I'll be leaving another one of them with you, for you to hand to the Archbishop.”

“Are you thinking I'm supposed to pass on your explanation to him?” Sharleyan tried to keep the trepidation out of her voice, but from Merlin's expression, it was obvious she'd failed.

“Don't worry,” he repeated. “It's really a lot simpler than things you already do every day. However, there's also this.”

He reached into his pouch again and extracted something else. It was hard to make out its shape as it lay in his palm, because it was made of something clearer than water.

“This goes into your ear, Your Grace,” he said. “I have one of these for the Archbishop, as well.”

“And what, pray tell, does it
do
in my ear,
Seijin
Merlin?” she asked a bit warily.

“Actually, you probably won't even notice it's there,” he said reassuringly. “It's deliberately designed to be invisible and comfortable enough to wear permanently. As for what it does, it's an audio relay from the communicator. As long as this is in your ear, and as long as you're within a thousand feet or so of the communicator, you can hear a message from me—or from Cayleb—without anyone else overhearing it.”

“I can?” Her eyes lit up again, and she looked quickly at Cayleb.

“I thought about that when Merlin explained it to me on the way here,” Cayleb told her. “Unfortunately, love, while you can hear me without anyone at your end noticing it, I've still got to talk into the ‘communicator' from the other end. And I'm afraid that if I sit around doing that during, oh, I don't know—a council of war, let's say—people may notice.”

She laughed and shook her head at him, then turned back to Merlin.

“Will this ‘relay' keep me from hearing anything else through that ear?”

“No, Your Grace,” he assured her. “It's designed to pick up any sound you would hear normally and pass it on. In fact, if you wanted to, you could adjust it to a higher level of sensitivity and actually hear things you wouldn't have been able to hear, otherwise. I'd advise against playing with the settings, though, until you're used to it.”

“Oh, I think I can resist
that
temptation easily enough!”

“Good.”

Merlin handed her the transparent little plug, then helped her settle it into her ear. He was right. There was a moment of discomfort as the ear canal was blocked, but then the “relay” almost seemed to disappear as it conformed perfectly to the shape of her ear.

“It's also designed to let your ear breathe, and to prevent sweat from getting trapped behind it,” Merlin told her. His voice sounded just a tiny bit odd. It was clearly his own, yet it had a strange, new timbre to it. It was a small thing, and she felt confident she would quickly adjust to it, but it still gave her a shivery, excited feeling to realize she was using at least a tiny part of the “technology” Langhorne and Bédard had stolen from the human race so many centuries before.

“Now, about the way you program the communicator—” Merlin began, then stopped abruptly as Cayleb raised his left hand and waggled his index finger under the
seijin
's nose.

“You told me you'd only need a few minutes to explain all of that to her,” the emperor said. “And, now that I think about it, you could walk her through it using that ‘audio relay' even while we were flying back to Chisholm, couldn't you?”

“Yes,” Merlin replied. “And you're mentioning this because—?”

“Because it's time for you and Edwyrd to find that deck of cards,” Cayleb told him tartly. “I haven't seen my wife in the better part of six months. I intend to make up for a little bit of that lost time before you and I head back to Chisholm. Starting
now
.”

“Oh.”

Merlin glanced at Seahamper. The sergeant was grinning openly, and Merlin shrugged.

“Do remember we have to get back while it's still dark in Corisande, Cayleb,” he said mildly.

“Oh, I will. But you're the one who told me we could have made the flight in only ninety minutes if we'd had to.”

“What I said was that we could make the flight in an hour and a half in an
emergency
,” Merlin corrected.

“And if my having a couple of hours to spend with my wife doesn't constitute an ‘emergency,' then it damned well
ought
to.”

Sharleyan was trying very hard not to giggle, and Seahamper shook his head at Merlin.

“There are some things not even a
seijin
can fight, even if he actually is an eight- or nine-hundred-year-old ‘PICA,' ” the guardsman said.

“So I see,” Merlin said with a smile of his own.

“Come on.” Seahamper twitched his head in the direction of Sharleyan's balcony. “If you didn't remember to bring any cards, Her Majesty has a couple of decks in her sitting room.”

“I think it's time,” Prince Hektor said sourly.

He and Earl Tartarian were alone in the small, private council chamber. The prince stood with his hands clasped behind him, looking out the tower window across the roofs of his capital city. Still farther out, across the broad, blue waters of the harbor, his naked eye could just make out the tiny white flaws on the horizon. Sails. The sails of Charisian schooners, hovering, watching, waiting to whistle up their larger, more powerful sisters if any ship of Tartarian's navy should be foolish enough to venture out from under the protection of the shore batteries.

At least it beats looking out in the
other
direction
, he thought sourly.
Siege lines and artillery emplacements are so much more . . . intrusive
.

“My Prince, I—” the earl began.

“I know what you're going to say, Taryl,” Hektor interrupted, never looking away from the harbor, “and you're right. At the rate things are going, we can hold out here in the capital for at least another three or four months. Probably longer, in fact. So, no, things aren't exactly desperate yet. But that's my point, really. If I offer to open negotiations with Cayleb now, it'll be from the closest thing to a position of strength I'm likely to find. And,” he smiled thinly, “at least Irys and Daivyn are out of his reach.”

Despite his best effort, Tartarian's expression betrayed him, and Hektor barked a laugh.

“Oh, I'm sure they're safely in Delferahk with Phylyp by now, Taryl! Either that, or else,” his own expression tightened for a moment, “they're at the bottom of the sea, at any rate, and if Captain Harys could bring
Lance
home after Darcos Sound, he can get
Wing
to Shwei Bay. And I trust Phylyp to get them the rest of the way to Delferahk.” He inhaled deeply, then shook himself, like a man brushing off his worst nightmare. “Besides, if their ship
had
been taken, Cayleb would have told me about it by now! He certainly wouldn't be keeping it a secret, given the way he'd know telling me they were in his hands would increase the pressure on me.”

Tartarian nodded, and Hektor shrugged.

“As I say,” the prince continued, “they're out of his reach. Unfortunately,
I'm
not, and I'm not going to be, either. Which means that from this point on, my position will only weaken.”

“No doubt that's true, My Prince,” the earl said, his expression troubled, “but surely Cayleb also realizes that. If I were he, I'm afraid I'd be inclined to ignore any suggestion of negotiations until the other side's position
was
closer to desperate.”

“There's always that possibility,” Hektor conceded. “But there are countervailing considerations, as well. Cayleb hates my guts. Well, that feeling's mutual, and he's not likely to forget that. In fact, he'll probably figure—accurately, I might add—that I'll betray him at the earliest possible moment. So you're undoubtedly right that he's going to be strongly inclined to let me stew in my own juices for at least a while longer.

“But he's also got to be looking towards what's going to happen after he wins. Let's face it,” Hektor bared his teeth briefly, “one way or the other, he
is
going to win. That's not your fault, or Rysel's, or Koryn's. If it's anyone's, it's my own, but the real reason is that we just never have had time to adjust to each of those little
surprises
of his.

“On the other hand, as you yourself once pointed out to me, Corisande isn't exactly a small territory. Especially with Irys and Daivyn out of his reach, he'll have to be worrying about how he's going to pacify the princedom afterward, and his best chance for any sort of peaceful surrender will be a negotiated settlement with me.”

“But if he doesn't expect you to . . . remain conquered any longer than you must, he's not going to leave you with any more power than he can help,” Tartarian pointed out.

“No. In fact, he's going to insist on everything he can think of to cut off my legs,” Hektor agreed grimly. “And I'm not going to be able to resist most of the terms he chooses to impose. The best I can realistically hope for at this point is that he'll leave me technically on the throne, with ‘advisers'—or possibly even an outright viceroy with a hefty garrison force—looking over my shoulder and watching every move I make like a wyvern watches a rabbit. He's no fool, Taryl, and he knows I've already killed his father and that I really don't care who takes
his
head . . . as long as someone finally gets around to it.” His smile was thin and ugly. “If he leaves me on the throne at all, it'll be under conditions which make me little more than his pensioner, at best.

“But even after he conquers Corisande, even if he actually incorporates Corisande into this ‘Charisian Empire' of his, he'll still have the Church to confront. At the moment, there's not a great deal the Church can do to him—not directly, not without a new model navy of its own. One of these days, though, the Church is going to
have
that kind of navy. It'll have the time to build one, anyway, because there's no way in this world Cayleb could possibly hope to conquer Howard and Haven, and once it does, there won't be any more uneven fights like Darcos Sound. So, at some point, our
dear
friend Cayleb is going to find himself fighting for his life with every man and ship he can scrape up. It may not happen tomorrow, or next five-day, but it
will
happen, Taryl. And when it does, when he's forced to reduce whatever garrison strength he thinks he can maintain in Corisande, when his attention is entirely focused on a mortal threat somewhere else, then—
then
, Taryl!—his precautions will weaken. They'll have to. And when they do, however long it takes for that to happen, I'll be ready.”

Tartarian looked into his prince's hard, hating eyes, and read the savage determination simmering in their depths. If Cayleb Ahrmahk could have seen what Taryl Lektor saw in that moment, he would never have settled for anything short of Hektor Daykyn's head.

For just a moment, Tartarian found himself wishing he served Cayleb, not Hektor. It wasn't
Cayleb's
ambition which had created the enmity between Corisande and Charis, and the fashion in which Cayleb had made peace with Nahrmahn at least proved the Charisian emperor was willing to let the past bury the past under
some
circumstances. Tartarian rather doubted that any honest man could legitimately complain about the fashion in which Hektor had always governed his own people. Ruthless, yes, but also just and surprisingly fair-minded. If only he could have settled for that, forgotten his grand ambition, forsworn the “great game.” . . .