How Firm a Foundation (Safehold) Read online

  “It could’ve been, but I don’t think it was,” Maigwair said. “I’ve been going over their reports, too, and they never actually saw the majority of those ‘war galleons’ at all. What they saw were masts and sails on the horizon, and don’t forget the way Haarahld used merchant galleons to convince Black Water that Cayleb’s galleons were with his fleet in the Sea of Charis when they were actually off ambushing Malikai off Armageddon Reef. I think this may have been more of the same, and I don’t really see how anyone can blame them for being fooled under the circumstances.”

  “Maybe,” Clyntahn said grudgingly.

  “It works with what we know of the timing,” Duchairn said, nodding at Maigwair. “Their spy network’s obviously as good as we thought it was. We fooled them with Allayn’s original orders, and that drew their main fleet out of position. But then their spies realized we’d misled them and reported Harpahr’s real sailing orders in time for them to realize what was happening. Only they still didn’t have time to get recall orders to the ships they’d already sent off, so they put together a ‘fleet’ of merchant galleons to convince Jahras and Kholman they couldn’t fight their way out to sea while they scraped up everything they had—including the handful of ships they could equip with their new weapon—and threw them directly into Harpahr’s teeth. If their weapon hadn’t worked, we would’ve had them, Zhaspahr. It’s that simple, and that’s how close we came to accomplishing exactly what you originally proposed to do.”

  For a moment, he was afraid that last sentence had been too blatant an appeal to Clyntahn’s ego. But then he saw the Grand Inquisitor nodding slowly and more thoughtfully. Clyntahn didn’t look one bit less angry, but at least he’d lost some of the dangerous, saw-toothed rage which had been riding him with spurs of fire.

  “All right,” he said, “but even if you’re right, the fact remains that we’ve suffered yet another defeat at the hands of heretics and apostates. The way we seem to keep stumbling from one disaster to another is bound to have an impact on even the most faithful if it goes on long enough. In fact, my inquisitors’ reports indicate that that process may already have begun.”

  “That’s a serious concern,” Zahmsyn Trynair said, entering the conversation for the first time. Duchairn tried not to glare at the Chancellor, but he supposed it was better Trynair should come late to the party than stay home entirely.

  “That’s a very serious concern,” Trynair repeated now. “What do you mean the ‘process’ may already have begun, Zhaspahr?”

  “We’re not seeing a sudden upsurge in heresy, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Clyntahn said. “Aside, of course,” he darted a venomous look at Duchairn and Trynair, “from the increasing number of ‘Reformists’ surfacing in Siddarmark, that is. But what we are seeing is what I suppose it would be fairest to call demoralization. People are seeing that despite the fact that we hugely outnumber the heretics, they keep winning battle after battle. Despite our best efforts, the casualty and prisoner totals from this latest debacle are going to get out, you know, and when they do, people are going to compare them to how little we’ve had to show for our efforts to date. Don’t think for a moment that it isn’t going to encourage the weak-hearted to feel even more despondent. In fact, it’s likely to start undermining support for the jihad in general. At the very least”—he paused for a moment, letting his eyes circle the table—“it’s going to begin to undermine confidence in the jihad’s direction.”

  Duchairn felt Trynair and Maigwair settle into sudden, frozen stillness. There was no mistaking Clyntahn’s implication.

  “I scarcely think,” the Treasurer said into the silence, choosing his words with excruciating care, “that anyone within the vicarate is likely to challenge our direction of the jihad.”

  After all, he added silently, you’ve slaughtered anybody who might have the courage or the wit to breathe a word about how thoroughly we’ve bungled things, haven’t you, Zhaspahr?

  “I’m not talking about the vicarate.” There was something smug—and ugly—about the Grand Inquisitor’s assurance, Duchairn thought, but then Clyntahn continued. “I’m worried about people outside the vicarate. I’m worried about all the bastards in Siddarmark and Silkiah who’re going their merry way violating the embargo every day. I’m worried about the upsurge in ‘Reformist’ propaganda that’s turning up in Siddarmark … and other realms, according to my inquisitors. Places like Dohlar and Desnair, for example—even the Temple Lands! And I’m worried about people who are going to lose heart because Mother Church seems unwilling to reach out her hand and smite the ungodly.”

  “We’ve been trying to smite the ungodly,” Duchairn pointed out, trying to disguise the sinking sensation he felt. “The problem is that it hasn’t been working out very well despite our best efforts.”

  “The problem,” Clyntahn said, his tone and expression both unyielding, “is that we haven’t reached out to the ungodly we can reach. The ungodly right here on the mainland.”

  “Like who, Zhaspahr?” Trynair asked.

  “Like Stohnar and his bastard friends, for one,” Clyntahn shot back. His lips twisted, but then he made them untwist with a visible act of will. “But that’s all right, I understand why we can’t touch them right now. The three of you have made that abundantly clear. I won’t pretend it doesn’t piss me off, and I won’t pretend I don’t think it’s ultimately a mistake. But I’m willing to concede the point—for now, at least—where Siddarmark and Silkiah are concerned.”

  Duchairn’s heart plunged as he realized where Clyntahn was headed. He couldn’t even pretend it was a surprise, despite the sickness in his belly.

  “I’m talking about those prisoners Thirsk took last year,” Clyntahn went on flatly. “The ones he’s somehow persistently managed not to hand over to the Inquisition or send to the Temple. They’re heretics, Zahmsyn. They’re rebels against God Himself, taken in the act of rebellion! My God, man—how much more evidence do you need? If Mother Church can’t act against them, then who can she act against? Do you think there aren’t thousands—millions—of people who aren’t asking themselves that very question right this moment?”

  “I understand what you’re talking about, Zhaspahr,” Maigwair said cautiously, “but Thirsk and Bishop Staiphan have a point, as well. If we deliver men who surrender to us to the Inquisition to suffer the Question and the Punishment of Schueler as they ought, then what happens to our men who try to surrender to them?”

  “Mother Church and the Inquisition cannot allow themselves to be swayed from their clear duty by such concerns,” Clyntahn said in that same flat, unyielding tone. “Should the heretics choose to mistreat our warriors, to abuse the true sons of God who fall into their power, then that blood will be on their hands, not ours. We can only do what The Book of Schueler and all the rest of the Writ call upon us to do and trust in God and the Archangels. No one ever told us that doing God’s will would be easy, but that makes it no less our duty and responsibility to do it. In fact, we ought—”

  He stopped, clapping his mouth shut, and Duchairn felt the despair of defeat. Maigwair wasn’t going to support him, despite what he’d just said. Not when a part of him agreed with Clyntahn to begin with, and especially not when the Grand Inquisitor had just made his fury over what had happened in the Markovian Sea so abundantly clear. And Trynair wasn’t going to argue with Clyntahn, either. Partly because he, too, agreed with the inquisitor, but even more because of what Clyntahn had just stopped short of saying.

  He’s offering a quid pro quo where Siddarmark and Silkiah are concerned, Duchairn thought bitterly. He’s not putting it into so many words, but Zahmsyn understands him just fine, anyway. And without at least one of them to back me, I can’t argue with him either. If I try, I’ll lose, and all I’ll accomplish will be to burn one more bridge with him.

  It was true, every word of it, and the Treasurer knew it, just as he knew the demand for the Charisian prisoners to be shipped to Zion would be sent out that very af
ternoon. But somehow knowing he couldn’t have stopped it even if he’d tried didn’t make him feel one bit less guilty and dirty for not trying after all.

  * * *

  “May I ask how the meeting went, Your Grace?” Wyllym Rayno, Archbishop of Chiang-wu, inquired a bit cautiously.

  He was almost certainly the only person in Zion who would have dared to ask that question at all, given the rumors circulating through the Temple about Greyghor Searose’s written report. He was also, however, the adjutant of the Order of Schueler, which made him the Grand Inquisitor’s second-in-command in both the order and the Office of Inquisition. The two of them had worked closely together for almost two decades, and if there’d been one person in the world whom Clyntahn had truly been prepared to trust, that person would have been Rayno.

  “Actually,” Clyntahn said with a smile which would have astonished any of his fellows among the Group of Four, given the tone of the meeting which had just ended, “it went well, Wyllym. Quite well.”

  “We’ll be able to move against the heretic prisoners in Gorath, then, Your Grace?” Rayno’s tone brightened, and Clyntahn nodded.

  “Yes,” he replied, then grimaced. “I had to go ahead and more or less promise—again—to keep our hands off Siddarmark and Silkiah.” He shrugged. “We knew going in that that was going to happen. Of course, my esteemed colleagues don’t have to know everything we’re up to, now do they?”

  “No, Your Grace,” Rayno murmured.

  He wondered how many of the rest of the Group of Four realized the extent to which Clyntahn used his well-earned reputation for bullheaded refusal to compromise and fiery temper to manipulate them. It had taken even Rayno years to discover that at least half that reputation was a weapon the Grand Inquisitor had crafted deliberately, with careful forethought. Its true effectiveness depended on the reality of the fury hiding so close beneath its wielder’s surface, of course, but on his bare-knuckled climb to the Grand Inquisitorship, Zhaspahr Clyntahn had discovered that while intolerance and ambition might make him hated, it was his passionate temper which made him feared. He’d learned to use that temper, not simply to be used by it, to batter opponents into submission, and the technique had served him well. It was a brute force approach, but it was also only one of the many weapons in his arsenal, as one unfortunate victim after another had discovered.

  “What can you tell me about this new weapon Searose is blathering about?” Clyntahn asked with one of the abrupt changes of subject for which he was famous.

  “Our agents in Charis continue to … fare poorly.” Rayno didn’t like admitting that, yet there was no use pretending otherwise. “Wave Thunder’s organization obviously has Shan-wei’s own luck, but I’m afraid there’s no point pretending he isn’t extremely competent, Your Grace, as well. Every effort to build an actual network, even among the Loyalists in Old Charis, has failed.”

  “That wasn’t the question I asked,” Clyntahn pointed out.

  “I realize that, Your Grace,” Rayno responded calmly. “It was more in the nature of a prefatory remark.”

  Clyntahn’s lips twitched on the brink of a smile. He was well aware of the extent to which Rayno “managed” him, and he was perfectly content to go right on being managed … within limits, and as long as Rayno produced results.

  “What I was going to say,” the archbishop continued, “is that our original hypothesis appears to be correct. According to one of the very few agents we have in place, the Charisians are casting what amounts to hollow round shot and filling the cavities with gunpowder. What he hasn’t been able to confirm is how they’re getting them to explode, although he’s offered a couple of theories which sound to my admittedly untrained ear as if they make sense.”

  Neither of them chose to mention the fact that Clyntahn had somehow failed to keep Allayn Maigwair informed of those agents’ reports.

  “What are the chances of having him dig more deeply into the matter?”

  “I would advise against that, Your Grace. The agent we’re talking about is Harysyn.”

  Clyntahn’s grunt was an acceptance of Rayno’s advice.

  “Harysyn” was the codename they’d assigned to one of their tiny handful of sources within the Kingdom of Old Charis. As Rayno had pointed out, every effort to establish a formal network in Old Charis—indeed, almost anywhere in the accursed Empire of Charis—had run into one stone wall after another. Sometimes it was almost enough to make Clyntahn truly believe in demonic interference on the other side. As a result of that unending sequence of failures, however, the sources which were available to them were more precious than jewels. That was why they’d been assigned codenames which Clyntahn insisted on using even in his conversations with Rayno. In fact, he’d made a point of never learning what the sources’ actual names might be, on the theory that what he didn’t know, he couldn’t disclose even by accident.

  While he hated to admit it, Maigwair and that gutless fool Duchairn did have a point about the apparent effectiveness of Charisian spies. He didn’t believe any of them were managing to operate within the Temple itself, but they had to be operating—and operating effectively—throughout the Temple Lands. It was the only explanation for how so many clerics—or their families, at least—could have escaped the Inquisition when he broke the Wylsynns’ group. Or how the Charisians could have discovered that Kornylys Harpahr’s fleet was actually going east, instead of west, for that matter. And that being the case, he wasn’t going to take a chance on anyone’s learning the identities of those precious sources of information.

  All their surviving sources had been strictly ordered to recruit no other agents. That reduced their “reach,” since it meant each and every one of those agents could report only what he or she actually saw or heard. It also meant each of them required his or her individual conduit back to the Temple, which made the transmission of anything they learned even slower and more cumbersome than it would already have been across such vast distances. Unfortunately, as Rayno had just said, every agent who had attempted to recruit others, to build any sort of true network, had been pounced on within weeks. It had taken a while for the Inquisition to realize that was happening, but once it had become evident, the decision to change their operational patterns had virtually made itself. And onerous as the restrictions might be, anything which made the spies they had managed to put—or keep—in place less likely to attract Wave Thunder’s attention was thoroughly worthwhile.

  Harysyn was a special case even among that tiny handful of assets, however. He hadn’t been placed in Charis at all; he’d been born there. A Temple Loyalist horrified by his kingdom’s heresy, he’d found his own way to communicate with the Inquisition, and virtually all those communications flowed only in one direction—from him to the Temple. He’d established his own channels, including one which would let them communicate back to him in an excruciatingly slow and roundabout fashion, although he’d also cautioned them that it could be used only sparingly, if there was no other choice. He was prepared to provide all the information he could, he’d told them from the outset, but if they expected him to avoid the detection which had befallen so many other agents and Loyalists, they would have to settle for what he could tell them and for his maintaining control of their communications.

  That had been more than enough to make Clyntahn and Rayno suspicious initially, since both of them were well aware of how much damage a double agent could do by feeding them false information. But Harysyn had been reporting for almost three years now without their detecting a single falsehood, and he’d been promoted by his superiors twice during that time, giving him better and better access. Besides that, he was crucial to one of Clyntahn’s central strategies.

  That was the main reason he’d been given the codename “Harysyn,” after one of the greatest mortal heroes of the war against Shan-wei’s disciples at the dawn of Creation.

  “Did he have anything else for us in the same report?” the Grand Inquisitor asked. “Anything specific to what
happened to Harpahr?”

  “Not specific to that, no, Your Grace.” Rayno shook his head. “There’s no mention at all of that battle in his message. I judge it was probably composed before the battle was even fought—or before any report of it had reached Harysyn, at any rate. He does say Mahndrayn’s been in discussions about ship design with Olyvyr, though. And he’s heard rumors Seamount and Mahndrayn are working with Howsmyn on further improving these new projectiles—‘shells,’ they’re calling them—as well as continuing to experiment with new cannon founding techniques. Whatever they’re up to, though, they’re keeping the information very confidential, and Harysyn’s promotion means he’s no longer in a position to see any of their internal correspondence.”

  Clyntahn grunted again, less happily this time. Harysyn’s sketches of things like the new Charisian hollow-based bullets, flintlock mechanisms, and artillery cartridges had been of immense value. He’d managed to provide the formula for the Charisians’ gunpowder (which not only caused less fouling but was rather more powerful than Mother Church’s had been) and the new techniques for producing granular powder, as well. Of course, the Inquisition had been forced to take great care in how it made that information available to the Temple Guard and the secular lords, lest it betray the fact that it had an agent placed to obtain it in the first place. It had, however, given Clyntahn invaluable advance notice on the innovations he had to justify under the Proscriptions of Jwo-jeng.

  “And that insufferable bastard Wylsynn?” he growled now as the thought of the Proscriptions drew his mind into a familiar groove.

  “Harysyn has seen very little of him personally.”

  Rayno kept his tone as clinical as possible; Clyntahn’s hatred for the Wylsynn family had become even more obsessive over the last year. Bad enough that Samyl and Hauwerd Wylsynn, the two men he’d hated most in all the world, had escaped the Question and the Punishment by dying before they could be taken into custody. Worse that Samyl’s wife and children had escaped the Inquisition completely. Yet worse than any of that, except in a purely personal sense, of course, was Paityr Wylsynn’s desertion to the heresy. He’d actually agreed to continue serving as Maikel Staynair’s Intendant, and not content with that, he’d even assumed direction of the Charisians’ Shan-wei-spawned “Patent Office.” A member of Clyntahn’s own order was actively abetting the flood of innovations that had allowed the renegade kingdom to escape the justly deserved destruction the Grand Inquisitor had decreed for it in the first place!