By Heresies Distressed (91 page)

“I see.”

Duchairn managed to keep his gorge down, although it wasn't easy. The fervor shining in Clyntahn's eyes frightened him. It was almost as if the Grand Inquisitor actually believed what he was saying about Charis' responsibility for Hektor's death. The fact that he could first order an act of murder so casually and then exploit it so cynically was bad enough. The possibility that he was actually able to believe his own lies was far worse, especially in one who wielded the authority of the Inquisition.

“I think we can all agree with that, Zhaspahr,” Trynair said calmly. “As you say, however Hektor died—on the field of battle, in bed, or struck down by an assassin's hand—he was obviously waging war against Mother Church's enemies. While I would never wish to appear overly cynical or calculating—” Duchairn wondered if he was the only one who noticed how Trynair's eyes hardened ever so briefly as the Chancellor gazed at Clyntahn “—the simple propaganda value of making that point publicly and loudly will be invaluable.”

“I thought so myself,” Clyntahn agreed with the merest hint of complacency.

Maigwair looked up sharply, and Duchairn felt something almost like pity for the captain general.

Just waking up to it now, are you, Allayn?
he thought sardonically.
Well, better late than never, I suppose. But you really need to work on controlling your expression
.

From the look in Maigwair's eyes, he'd finally realized what Trynair and Duchairn had suspected all along, and the fact that Clyntahn had acted unilaterally, without even consulting his colleagues, must be even more frightening to him than it was to Duchairn. After all, Maigwair was the most vulnerable of the Group of Four. The rest of the vicarate had been unhappy, to put it mildly, when the entire new galley fleet was declared obsolete before its very first battle against the forces of darkness. Even those too circumspect—or terrified—to openly criticize the Grand Inquisitor, or the Chancellor, were beginning to mutter about the Captain General's apparent incompetence. Now Clyntahn had thrown Hektor casually to the slash lizards simply because the man was more valuable as a suitably deceased martyr than he was alive. If the Grand Inquisitor could do that, then he could certainly offer up the weakest and most vulnerable of his colleagues to appease the rest of the vicarate's wrath.

And he
will
do it, Allayn
, Duchairn thought.
Without a moment's hesitation or a single second thought, if he sees any advantage in it
.

An image came to him—an image of ice wyverns on an island of drift ice, pushing one of their fellows into the water to see if the krakens were still there. It wasn't very difficult to imagine one of them with Maigwair's face.

“One of the dilemmas I mentioned a moment ago,” Trynair continued, “is what we do about Prince Daivyn, however.”

“I'm not sure there's any reason to rush into decisions where he's concerned, Zahmsyn,” Duchairn said. The Chancellor looked at him, one eyebrow raised, and he shrugged. “At the moment, he and his sister—and the Earl of Coris—are safe enough in Talkyra.”

“And ‘at the moment' Zhames has every reason to
keep
him there, too,” Clyntahn said with a deep, amused chuckle.

However little Duchairn might care for Clyntahn's amusement over the war between Delferahk and Charis which had emerged from the Grand Inquisitor's own ship seizure policy, he had to concede that Clyntahn had a point. As long as King Zhames was at war with Cayleb and Sharleyan, he was scarcely likely to surrender his wife's distant cousin to the Charisians.

And at least Talkyra's far enough inland that the Charisians can't get to it
, Duchairn thought caustically.
They seem to be able to go anywhere
else
in his kingdom they choose to!

He upbraided himself. It wasn't King Zhames' fault that the Imperial Charisian Navy could land Marines at any point along his coast it chose. It was obvious the Charisians realized there was nothing he could do about it, though, and they were deliberately and methodically shutting down every port and harbor Delferahk had once boasted. They hadn't burned any more cities, but their blockade was virtually impenetrable, and they'd continued pouncing on every military target that offered itself. By now, the Delferahkan Navy was extinct, and although the Charisians had been scrupulously careful to avoid collateral damage to non-Delferahkan property in the course of their cutting-out expeditions to seize Delferahkan merchant ships and galleys in neutral ports, no one really wanted to risk Cayleb's ire by offering those Delferahkan vessels refuge.

Still, there was a lot of validity to Duchairn's own thought about the security of Zhames II's capital city. Talkyra truly was much too far inland to be effectively threatened by any Charisian attack. Which, in its own way, summed up the ultimate limitations upon Charisian power. Despite their successes along Delferahk's coast, or their ability to invade Corisande, or even the confusing, fragmentary reports Maigwair had so far received about their Marines' frightening new weapons and tactics, they simply lacked the land-based manpower to fight their way into the vitals of any mainland realm.

“I'm not especially concerned about Daivyn's physical security or safety,” Trynair said. “I'm concerned about his political value. I'd prefer to see to it that no one else tries to exploit that value in a way which might conflict with our own policies.”

“Leave the boy be for now, Zahmsyn,” Clyntahn said almost impatiently. “He's not going anywhere. Where
could
he go, after all? No one who isn't already actively fighting the apostates is going to want to risk fishing in waters like these, at least until we tell them to. And when the time comes that
we
need him, we'll be able to put our hand on him whenever we choose.”

“It's not quite that simple, Zhaspahr. Especially not if we intend to recognize him as the rightful Prince of Corisande.”

“Actually, I think Zhaspahr is right,” Duchairn said, little though he relished finding himself in agreement with the Grand Inquisitor. Trynair looked at him again, and Duchairn shrugged. “It's not as if Daivyn—or Coris, who's the one who really matters in this instance—has anyone else to champion his cause. If we proclaim that Daivyn is the legitimate Prince of Corisande, and if Mother Church undertakes to restore him to his throne when the schism has been utterly defeated, that ought to be enough. Certainly Coris is smart enough and experienced enough to realize that. Let's leave him where he is, for now, at least. We can handle anything we need to handle through correspondence. Or, for that matter, we can always summon Coris here to Zion for us to give him more specific, face-to-face instructions. I think we can let a barely nine-year-old boy who's just been orphaned try to find some stability in his life before we drag him into some sort of political frying pan.”

Trynair gazed into Duchairn's eyes for several moments, then nodded slowly. Duchairn was in no doubt that Trynair would sacrifice the boy without a moment's hesitation if he decided it was the expedient thing to do. But at least the Chancellor had enough compassion to be willing to let a grieving boy be until it
became
the expedient thing to do. It was possible Clyntahn, did, too, but Duchairn personally never doubted that Clyntahn's position was the result of indifference—or even of smug satisfaction with how well his murder of the boy's father had worked out—rather than of any sort of concern for young Daivyn.

“All right,” Trynair said aloud. “I'll draft a message to Coris, embodying our recognition of Daivyn and suggesting ways in which Coris and the Prince might be of assistance to us against his father's killers. I'll circulate the draft to all of you before I send it, of course,” he added with a slightly pointed glance in Clyntahn's direction.

That glance bounced off of the Grand Inquisitor's armor without so much as scratching its paint.

“In the meantime,” Maigwair put in, “I have to admit that I'm a bit concerned over the fact that, as Zahmsyn pointed out earlier, the weather is going to greatly impede our ability to communicate in another few five-days.”

“Concerned in what way?” Duchairn asked.

“I'm not that worried about our ability to coordinate our plans elsewhere,” Maigwair said. “Our existing instructions are comprehensive enough that they probably aren't going to need a lot of modifications. And I think we're all agreed that it's unlikely, to say the least, that the apostates are going to attempt any major operations against the mainland until next spring. So it's unlikely we're going to have to respond to any immediate military crises.”

“Any
more
immediate military crises, you mean,” Clyntahn muttered in a voice whose level was carefully calculated to be just audible. Maigwair's lips tightened for a moment, but he continued as if the Grand Inquisitor hadn't spoken.

“What
does
worry me,” he said, “is what's going to happen here, in the Temple and in Zion, once winter really closes in. There's always that tendency to . . . turn inward after the first heavy snowfall.”

What might almost have been unwilling—and surprised—respect flickered in Clyntahn's eyes, and Duchairn found himself sharing the Grand Inquisitor's surprise. One didn't normally expect that sort of remark out of Allayn Maigwair. Although, the Treasurer General thought a moment later, Maigwair's awareness of his own weakened position might just explain it.

As Maigwair had so aptly pointed out, once winter closed in around the city of Zion, the Temple's interests tended to switch to more purely internal matters. Communications with the outside world were slowed, less reliable, and the rhythm of Mother Church's life slowed with them. Vicars and archbishops resident in Zion tended to use that time to polish up their alliances and catch up on paperwork and routine administrative matters. And animosities and pet grievances with one another tended to loom even larger than usual within the hierarchy's rival factions.

But this winter was going to be different.
This
winter was going to be spent worrying, reflecting upon Grand Vicar Erek's Address from the Throne, and thinking about the implications for the future. Charis' apparently unbroken string of triumphs was going to be a huge factor in that thinking, and so were any potential criticisms of the Group of Four's leadership. The normally somnolent winter was going to be anything but tranquil, with potentially dire consequences for the Group of Four.

Or, at least, for its most vulnerable member.

“Oh, I think we'll find something to keep us busy,” Clyntahn said, and something about his tone snatched Duchairn's attention back to him. The light in Clyntahn's eyes wasn't simply confident; it was anticipatory. The light of a man looking greedily forward to some treat he'd promised himself.

Tiny icy feet seemed to dance up and down inside Duchairn's bones. Was it possible that—?

“Do you have some particular ‘something' in mind, Zhaspahr?” Trynair asked. From the Chancellor's expression, he seemed to have noticed the same thing, but he asked his question rather more calmly than Duchairn thought
he
could have asked it.

“Something always comes along, Zahmsyn,” Clyntahn pointed out almost jovially. “In fact, I've noticed that it tends to come along at the most surprisingly useful times.”

Duchairn's stomach muscles tightened as he recalled a seemingly innocent conversation with Vicar Samyl Wylsynn. He hadn't really thought all that deeply about it at the time, mostly because it had seemed so appropriate to the moment. Since he'd been called to the orange, Duchairn had missed altogether too many of the retreats to which he'd been routinely invited. He'd been trying to make up for some of that—as much as he could fit it into his schedule's voracious demands, at any rate—and he'd found himself sitting next to Wylsynn at one of the prayer breakfasts he'd attended. He hadn't given much thought to the coincidence which had brought them together. Not then. Not until later, when he'd had the opportunity to reflect on possibly deeper meanings in what Wylsynn had said.

He'd had two or three more conversations—brief, to be sure—with Wylsynn since. All of them, like the first one, could have been nothing more than innocent coincidences, but Duchairn didn't believe that for a moment. Wylsynn had been sounding him out about something, and given the Wylsynn family's well-earned reputation, it wouldn't have been something of which Clyntahn would have approved.

If Wylsynn's really up to something, and if Zhaspahr's gotten wind of it
. . .

Duchairn hadn't worked with Clyntahn for so many years without realizing how the Grand Inquisitor's mind worked. The possible opportunity to finally crush his most hated rival would appeal strongly to him at any time. And he'd take special pleasure in waiting until he could use the chance to condemn Wylsynn for “treason against Mother Church” to divert his colleagues' attention from the Group of Four's failures at the most opportune possible time. Even better—from his perspective, at least—the discovery of “traitors” within the ranks of the vicarate itself could only help to whip up even more fervor against
all
of the Church's enemies . . . and strengthen Clyntahn's hand as the man charged with rooting out those enemies wherever they might hide.

Even if that meant among his fellow vicars . . . and especially among the ones who might have dared to criticize the Grand Inquisitor—and his allies—for mismanagement of the schism.

Trynair hadn't had the advantage of Duchairn's exchanges with Wylsynn, but he, too, obviously sensed something else under Clyntahn's surface joviality. Whatever he might suspect, however, he clearly wasn't prepared to press the point at the moment.