Princess Mahrya was bent over a history text in one of the window seats. At almost eighteen, she was approaching marriageable age, although there were no immediate prospects on the horizon. Fortunately, as the graceful profile etched against the glow of the lamp at her shoulder proved, she took after her petite, attractive mother more than her father. She also had her mother's mischievous personality.
Prince Nahrmahn, her younger brother, at fourteen, looked like a much younger-and slimmer-version of his father and namesake. He, however, wasn't interested in a history text. He was buried in a novel, and judging from his intent expression it must contain quite a bit of derring-do. Not to mention swords, mayhem, and murder.
Their youngest children, Prince Trahvys and Princess Felayz, were up in the nursery in the nannies' care. It would be a few years yet before they were trusted among the library's expensive volumes.
There were moments, like this one, when Nahrmahn almost wished he weren't so deeply involved in the great game. Unfortunately, he was, and he intended to leave Nahrmahn the Younger a much larger and more powerful princedom than he himself had inherited. Besides, whatever its drawbacks, it was the only game truly worth playing.
His smile went just a bit crooked at the thought. Then he shook himself and returned his attention to his wife.
Ohlyvya smiled fondly at him, accustomed to the way his mind sometimes wandered. Theirs was not a marriage of towering, passionate love. Ohlyvya was a daughter of a collateral branch of the previous ruling house, and her marriage to Nahrmahn-arranged when she was all of four years old-had been part of the glue binding the old régime's adherents to the new dynasty. She'd been raised to expect exactly that, but Nahrmahn knew she was genuinely fond of him, and he'd often been surprised by how deeply he'd come to care for her. He wasn't, as he'd realized long ago, the sort of person who allowed people close to him, but somehow Ohlyvya had gotten inside his guard, and he was glad she had. Raising four children together had helped bring them even closer, in many ways, and he had great respect for her intelligence. Indeed, he often wished he'd been able to name her to his Privy Council, but that would have been unthinkable.
"Are you going to move sometime this evening, dear?" she asked sweetly, and he laughed.
"As soon as I recover from the shock of your perfidious ambush," he told her. "In fact, I think I've just about-"
Someone rapped sharply on the library door. Nahrmahn's head turned towards the sound, eyebrows lowering. All of the palace servants knew his evenings with Ohlyvya and the children were never to be disturbed.
The door opened, and one of the palace footmen stood in the opening, bowing deeply.
"Your pardon, Your Highness," he said, just a bit nervously. "I deeply regret disturbing you, but Bishop Executor Wyllys has just arrived at the palace. He says it's most urgent that he speak with you."
Nahrmahn's lowered eyebrows shot upward, and he heard Ohlyvya' little gasp of surprise. Mahrya looked up from her history text, her own expression one of astonishment, and not a little apprehension. The younger Nahrmahn was far too deeply buried in his novel even to notice.
"I'm sorry, my dear," Nahrmahn said to Ohlyvya after a heartbeat or two. "It looks like we'll have to finish this game later. Tomorrow evening, perhaps."
"Of course." Her voice was calm, almost tranquil, but he saw the questions burning in her eyes. Questions, he knew, she wouldn't ask.
"Forgive me for rushing off," he continued, rising and bending to kiss her forehead. "I'll be along to bed as soon as I can."
"I understand, dear," she said, and watched him stride rapidly out of the library.
* * *
"Your Highness, I apologize for arriving in such unseemly haste at such an hour," Bishop Executor Wyllys Graisyn said as he was ushered into the small, private presence chamber.
The footman withdrew, and the bishop executor was alone with the prince and only a single bodyguard.
"Your Eminence, I'm sure no apology is necessary," Nahrmahn said, sparring politely for time. "I doubt very much that you would have come to call at such an hour without formally informing me you were coming except under pressing circumstances. Please, tell me what I can do for you."
"Actually, Your Highness, this is somewhat awkward," Graisyn said. His tone was simultaneously apologetic, embarrassed, and excited, and Nahrmahn's own curiosity-and apprehension-burned hotter.
"A Church dispatch boat arrived here in Eraystor less than three hours ago, Your Highness," the cleric continued. "It carried dispatches, of course. But when I opened them, I discovered that apparently a previous dispatch boat had been sent to me. That vessel never arrived, and I can only assume it foundered somewhere in the Chisholm Sea in that storm last month."
The bishop executor paused, and Nahrmahn's spine stiffened. He sat straighter in his chair, and his face, he was well aware, was an only too accurate an indicator of his suddenly spiking apprehension. Whatever the lost dispatch boat's messages might have contained must have been vital for a follow-up dispatch to get Graisyn over to the palace at this late an hour. Especially if the follow-up itself had arrived less than three hours earlier.
"As I'm sure you must have guessed, Your Highness, the earlier dispatch boat carried critically important messages. Messages addressed both to you and to me from Chancellor Trynair and Archbishop Lyam. Fortunately, when the dispatch boat failed to return to Traylis on schedule, duplicate dispatches were sent. They've now arrived."
"I see," Nahrmahn said. Then he cocked his head. "Actually, Your Eminence, I don't see. Not yet."
"Forgive me, Your Highness." Graisyn smiled almost nervously. "I'm afraid this is rather different from the sorts of business I normally discharge for Mother Church. Although, actually, as I understand my instructions, I'm not here on Mother Church's behalf. I'm here on behalf of Chancellor Trynair in his role as Chancellor of the Knights of the Temple Lands."
Nahrmahn felt his breathing falter.
"Your Highness," Graisyn began, "the Chancellor's become increasingly concerned by the apparent ambition of Haarahld of Charis. Accordingly, speaking for the Knights of the Temple Lands, he's instructed me to tell you that-"
* * *
The moon was high in a cloudless sky, spilling gorgeous silver light down over the palace gardens. A small group of the carefully bred night wyverns for which Emerald was justly famed trilled and whistled sweetly in the fronds of the trees, and a cool breeze drifted in through the open window of the council chamber.
The gardens' tranquillity was in pronounced contrast to the occupants of that chamber.
"I can't believe this," Earl Pine Hollow said. "I simply can't believe this!"
"That, unfortunately, doesn't change the situation, Trahvys," Nahrmahn said rather tartly.
"I know." The first councillor gave himself a visible shake and smiled crookedly at his cousin. "I'm sorry. It's just that without any warning at all, having it just dropped on us in the middle of the night . . ."
"If you think it came as a surprise to you, you should've been there when Graisyn dropped it on me."
"I'd prefer to not even imagine that, if it's all the same to you," Pine Hollow said in a more natural tone.
"The thing that occurs to me, My Prince," Hahl Shandyr said, "is to wonder what could have set this off. None of our contacts in Zion or the Temple even suggested that the Group of Four might be contemplating something like this. May I ask if the Bishop Executor gave any indication that Hektor might have been behind this?"
"I don't think he has the least idea himself," Nahrmahn said frankly. "Personally, I'd be inclined to doubt Hektor set it up. Mind you, it sounds like it's designed to give him everything he's ever wanted-or, at least, to make him think that's what it's going to give him-but there's no way he could have that much influence with the Group of Four. No," the prince shook his head, "my guess is that this is Clyntahn. Haarahld must have finally done something to push him over the edge, and it must at least seem threatening enough to let him carry the other three along with him."
"My Prince," Shandyr said, in an unusually quiet voice, "I apologize."
Nahrmahn looked at him sharply, his expression a question, and his spymaster drew a deep breath.
"I ought to have been able to reestablish at least a handful of agents in Charis, Your Highness," he said. "If I had, we might at least know what's inspired this. And," he drew another, deeper breath, "we might have known in time to see it coming."
"I won't pretend I'm happy about the situation in Charis," Nahrmahn told him. "But judging from the tone of Trynair's messages, even if we'd had agents in place, they might not have realized this was in the wind. In fact, I doubt anyone in Charis has the least idea of what's about to happen."
"I'm sure that's part of their thinking, My Prince," Gharth Rahlstahn, the Earl of Mahndyr, said. Mahndyr was Nahrmahn's senior admiral, and his expression was grim.
"I'm sure that's part of their thinking," he repeated, once he was certain he had Nahrmahn's attention. "But this puts us in a Shan-wei of a spot. It would've been bad enough if the original dispatches had gotten through, but we've lost the better part of an entire month."
"Frankly," Pine Hollow said, "the whole tenor of this . . . correspondence, if I can call it that, worries me. We aren't being offered assistance, Your Highness; we're being ordered to do what Trynair and Clyntahn want us to do. And from the way I read these messages," he tapped the elaborately illuminated letter in question, lying on the council table in front of him, "Hektor's the senior partner as far as the Group of Four is concerned. It isn't an alliance of equals. We're required to support Hektor . . . and to place our fleet under the command of his admirals."
"I assure you, it does more than simply 'worry' me," Nahrmahn replied.
He started to say something more, then stopped and swallowed the words unspoken. Even here, among his closest advisers, he didn't quite dare to express the full, scathing fury he'd felt as he realized the Group of Four saw his entire princedom as a footpad it could whistle up on a whim and command to cut the throat of someone who'd irritated it.
"But," he continued after a moment, "however I may feel about it, we're stuck with it. Unless anyone here thinks refusing Chancellor Trynair's 'assistance' in this matter would be advisable?"
No one spoke, nor did they have to, and Nahrmahn's alum-tart smile held at least some genuine amusement.
"In that case," he said, "the really important question is one for you, Gharth. Is it possible for us to meet this schedule?"
"I don't know, Your Highness," Mahndyr said frankly. "I won't know until I've had a chance to kick some of my staff awake and get them started asking the right questions down at the dockyard. Off the top of my head, though, it's unlikely we can get the reserve activated in time. We're supposed to have our entire fleet ready for battle by early November, but nobody warned us it was coming. Just fully manning our active-duty galleys is going to stretch our current manpower to the breaking point. We'll have to send out the press gangs to man the reserve, and every merchant seaman who can see lightning or hear thunder's going to realize the press is coming as soon as we start refitting the reserve. So they're going to make themselves scarce. Which doesn't even consider where we are in terms of the supplies we need."
He shook his head.
"Your Highness, I'll do my best, but I'm not sure we could have had the entire reserve manned and worked up within the original time schedule. With the time we've lost just finding out about it-"
He shook his head again.
"I can't say I'm surprised to hear it," Nahrmahn said. "And, to be totally honest, I'm not certain I'm unhappy to hear it."
Mahndyr's surprise showed, and the prince chuckled harshly.
"Hektor's known about this longer than we have," he said. "That much is obvious from the nature of Trynair's dispatches. So he's going to've already started bringing his fleet to a war footing. Well, if we're going to be obliged to follow his orders, then I'd just as soon see his admirals forced to take the lead. He's going to be thinking in terms of his own advantage out of this. All right, let him pay the price for it. It's not our fault no one told us about this soon enough. We'll do our best, of course," he smiled thinly, "but surely no one will be able to blame us if we can't get the majority of the reserve fitted out and manned in the unfortunately short time available to us."
NOVEMBER,
YEAR OF GOD 891
I
Royal Charisian Navy Anchorage,
Lock Island
The spring night was warm and humid, and distant lightening flickered far to the west, over Howell Bay, as the fleet weighed anchor.
Merlin stood beside Cayleb on the quarterdeck of HMS Dreadnought, with Ahrnahld Falkhan just behind them. Harsh commands cut through the darkness, but they were hushed somehow, as if the people giving them believed that if they were all very quiet, no one would notice what they were doing.
Merlin smiled slightly at the thought, despite the tension coiling within. All around him, a total of thirty-two galleons were getting underway. Thirty of them were warships of the Royal Charisian Navy; the other two were impressed merchantmen assigned to serve as supply ships. Unlike anyone else, his artificial eyes could pick every one of them out clearly, and a part of his tension stemmed from the very real possibility of collisions as, one by one, the fundamentally clumsy square-riggers raised their anchors and set sail. Fortunately, the wind was with them, blowing steadily, if not overly bly, out of the west.
But that natural fear of accidents was only a part of his tension, and not the greatest one.
Inevitably, word of the mobilizing navies of Corisande, Chisholm, and Emerald had gotten out, carried by nervous merchant skippers to every port from Manchyr to Tanjyr. As the news reached Charis, Haarahld had responded by closing his waters and expelling all foreign shipping. His enemies had expected that response. In fact, they might have been suspicious if he hadn't done it, and if he was a bit less than gentle with Corisandian or Emerald-flagged merchantmen, who could blame him?
