"And?"
"And I'm not sure what to make of it," Makferzahn admitted.
"Well don't just sit there," Maysahn commanded.
"Sorry." Makferzahn gave himself a little shake and sipped from his chocolate cup. Then he set the cup back down and leaned a bit closer to his superior.
"They've got half a dozen new ships under construction in the yard," he said. "Not galleys-galleons."
"Galleons?" Maysahn frowned in perplexity. What in Langhorne's name could the Royal Charisian Navy want with galleons?"
"I know." Makferzahn's small shrug was eloquent with frustration. "It doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's what they're doing."
"Did your man manage to pick up any indication of why?"
"No one's talking about it very much, even in the taverns and bars," Makferzahn said. "But according to the gossip he did overhear, they're arming them with cannon. Lots of cannon. According to one fellow he got drunk enough to risk pumping a bit, they're putting as many as thirty or even forty guns aboard some of them."
Maysahn's frown deepened. That was as silly as anything he'd heard lately. Oh, it might explain why they were building galleons, since he couldn't think of any practical way to put that many guns aboard a galley. But it didn't explain why they wanted to mount that many guns in the first place. No doubt they'd be able to fire a devastating broadside before boarding, which would certainly be worthwhile. But they wouldn't have time for more than a single broadside each, and given how clumsy and unmaneuverable galleons were, closing with a galley in the first place would be all but impossible.
"Whatever they're up to," Makferzahn continued, "they seem to think it's pretty important. My man managed to confirm the rumors about Cayleb. He's taken personal charge of their efforts out there, and he's pushing hard. Seems to be doing a damned good job of it, too, I'm afraid."
"I wish I could say I was surprised by that," Maysahn said sourly. "Unfortunately, he's a lot like his father in that regard. Life would be so much simpler if they were both just idiots. But then the Prince probably wouldn't need us here, would he?"
"Probably not," Makferzahn agreed. "But what do you make of it?"
"I'm not at all sure, either," Maysahn admitted.
He leaned back in his chair, drumming lightly on the tabletop while he watched the hucksters in the square across the street hawking their wares. A huge, articulated eight-wheeled freight wagon rumbled past, big enough to require two draft dragons, and one of the big six-limbed lizards snuffled wistfully as it smelled the fresh vegetables on display.
"You're right about the importance they must attach to whatever it is they're doing, especially if that's where Cayleb's disappeared to," he said finally. "And I suppose those new rigging plans Olyvyr has introduced could have something to do with it, too. Every report about them indicates that even the square-riggers he's been experimenting with are lots more maneuverable. Maybe they actually think they can get a galleon into effective artillery range of a galley."
"I just don't see them doing it without getting swarmed," Makferzahn objected. He wasn't rejecting Maysahn's theory out of hand, but clearly he wasn't convinced, either. "I could believe they thought they could get into range to smash one galley, but an entire fleet? What do they think all the other galleys are going to be doing in the meantime? And how do they expect to coordinate their own galleys with galleons?"
"I didn't say I thought they could do it." Maysahn shrugged. "I'm just trying to figure out what they could possibly be thinking. And," he continued a bit reluctantly, "the fact that I can't makes me very nervous. Whatever else the Charisian Navy may be, it's not exactly run by fools."
Makferzahn nodded in emphatic agreement. Like Maysahn, the more Makferzahn saw of the Royal Charisian Navy, the more he came to appreciate its quality. The Corisandian navy was one of the best in the world, but it wasn't in the Charisian Navy's league. No one else's Navy was, and Makferzahn had found himself sharing Maysahn's concern over the fact that not even Prince Hektor seemed to realize just how true that was.
But the immediate point, he reminded himself, was that Charisians normally didn't do stupid things where their navy was concerned.
"There were two other tidbits of information," he offered. Maysahn quirked an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. "First, Olyvyr seems to think he's finally worked out a way to sheath a ship in copper without having it fall apart. At any rate, according to my man, the ships they're building are all supposed to be coppered when they're finished."
He and Maysahn looked at one another thoughtfully. Sir Dustyn Olyvyr's mania for finding some way to protect his ships' hulls from the depredations of borers was well known. Not that he was alone in that, of course. The several varieties of shellfish and worms which fell under that general heading could literally devour a ship's timbers in a matter of only a few months, and every attempt to stop them with pitch or some other form of protective coating had failed. If Olyvyr truly had managed to solve the problems which had so far stymied his efforts to use copper, the long-term implications would obviously be significant. But at this particular moment, Zhaspahr Maysahn was rather more concerned with short-term implications.
"You said two tidbits," he observed. "What's the other one?"
"The minor fact that they appear to have assembled a squadron of galleons to practice whatever it is they're up to," Makferzahn said grimly. "It's only five ships, but it seems to spend a fair amount of time out on exercises. And it anchors in the Citadel Basin, well away from any other shipping, whenever it's in port. According to the fellow my man got drunk, it's commanded by a Commodore Staynair."
"Staynair?" Maysahn repeated slowly. The last name was scarcely unique in Charis, but it wasn't especially common, either. "Would that be Sir Domynyk Staynair?"
"The Bishop's younger brother," Makferzahn agreed with a nod.
"Now that's interesting," Maysahn murmured while his brain raced.
On one hand, it was reasonable enough, he supposed. If this mysterious project of theirs was important enough for Cayleb to take personal command of it, then they'd want one of their best naval officers working with him on it, and everything he'd ever heard about Commodore Staynair suggested the commodore certainly fell into that category. But there was also the connection to Tellesberg's bishop. Rumor had it that Bishop Executor Zherald had been known to express more than a few qualms about Staynair's ultimate loyalties. If his younger brother was this deeply involved in whatever Haarahld and his son were up to, then Bishop Maikel probably knew all about it, too. Which meant the Church-or, at least, the Charisian branch of the Church-also knew about it. Although that didn't necessarily mean the bishop executor did.
"I wonder," Makferzahn said. His thoughtful tone drew Maysahn's attention back to him, and the younger man shrugged. "I was just wondering," he continued once he was certain he had his superior's ear, "about those galleons Olyvyr is building right here in Tellesberg."
"What about them?"
"Well, it just occurred to me while we were sitting here that he has a dozen of them under construction for eight different owners. That's in addition to all these 'schooners' of his, of course."
"Every shipyard in the Kingdom's laying down ships right and left," Maysahn pointed out dryly. "The yards that aren't actually building are all busy rerigging existing ships to take advantage of the new sail plans. And it's all Olyvyr's fault, one way or another. Well, his and Howsmyn's."
"I know. But apparently all these new galleons of his are identical to one another. And according to a couple of carpenters working in Howsmyn's Tellesberg yard, there are some significant changes in their design. For one thing, they're a good twenty or thirty feet longer and a hell of a lot more heavily built than any galleon those carpenters have ever worked on before. I know Olyvyr's reputation, and I know these new rigging notions of his have only strengthened that reputation. Still, doesn't it strike you as a bit odd that eight different shipowners should simultaneously order a dozen new ships, all built to a new and untested design?"
"That does sound a bit peculiar," Maysahn acknowledged. He sipped chocolate thoughtfully, gazing out at the busy street scene once more.
"You'd think they'd be a little bit more conservative, wouldn't you?" he mused aloud. "Maybe let Olyvyr build a couple of these new designs of his, get them into service and see how they actually performed, before they sank that much money into them."
"That's exactly what I was thinking," Makferzahn agreed. "At the same time, as you just pointed out, he has stood the entire Charisian shipbuilding business on its ear. At the moment, people are so busy throwing money at him if he'll just design a ship for them that these people may've simply decided that if they want an Olyvyr-designed a ship at all, they have to take what they can get. And," the younger spy admitted, "they've already seen plenty of evidence that his new ideas about rigging work pretty much as advertised."
"That's all true enough. But I think the possibility that he's actually building them for the Navy needs to be considered seriously," Maysahn said. "And if that's true, we'd better report that possibility to the Prince while we work on either confirming or denying it."
He sat for a moment longer, contemplating the news, then shrugged.
"It may not make a lot of sense to us right this minute, but at least we know a bit more than we did. Good work, Zhames. I'll get a dispatch off to Manchyr with Captain Whaite tomorrow morning."
* * *
"-with Captain Whaite tomorrow morning."
Merlin Athrawes frowned as Owl played back the day's take from the bug assigned to follow Zhaspahr Maysahn around.
The endless hours he was investing in what he'd come to think of as "Project Bootstrap" left him far less time than he would have preferred to deal with things like monitoring Maysahn's whereabouts. He'd had to leave virtually all of that sort of activity up to Owl, and that made him nervous.
To be fair, the AI seemed to be handling the task adequately so far. It was Owl who'd identified Makferzahn as Mhulvayn's replacement, and the computer did an excellent job of keeping anyone in its sights after Merlin had tagged that individual for surveillance. But Owl remained hopelessly literal-minded and unimaginative, and Merlin had no choice but to allow the AI to sort and analyze the take from the majority of the SNARCs and hope nothing critical got lost. Some of the SNARCs Merlin continued to monitor personally-those watching Hektor, Nahrmahn, and Archbishop Erayk, for example-but even there he was forced to rely on Owl's recognition of critical keywords to direct his attention to relative bits of information.
Which category the afternoon's conversation between Maysahn and Makferzahn certainly fell into.
Merlin leaned back in his chair in his darkened quarters while he pondered. The fact that he could get along with so little "sleep" helped some, at least, although he had to remember to disarrange his bedding every night.
Should I take this information to Wave Thunder? he mused. It had to happen sooner or later, and at least they don't seem to've picked up on the changes in the artillery itself. But just what they already know is going to start someone like Hektor asking questions I'd really prefer not get asked just yet.
If he told Wave Thunder about this particular "vision," the baron might just feel inclined to pick up Makferzahn and all of his identified agents. In many respects, Merlin wouldn't have minded shutting down Hektor's network again. But if they did that, Hektor was going to wonder just what had inspired them to do so. And if they didn't shut down his entire network, then the information Makferzahn had already picked up would probably get through to Corisande anyway. Which would almost certainly start Hektor's agile mind down the same path.
Of course, there is another possibility, he thought more grimly. Nothing says "Captain Whaite" has to survive to get Maysahn's dispatches to Hektor.
Given the voyage time between Tellesberg and Manchyr, Sea Cloud's failure to arrive on schedule would probably throw at least some serious delay into Hektor's information loop. The transit time was almost forty days either way for the disguised courier. If she should suffer a mischief, it would be eighty days, at the earliest, before Maysahn learned of her loss, and then it would take his replacement dispatch another forty days or so to reach Hektor.
It was tempting. In fact, it was very tempting, and the recon skimmer could eliminate Sea Cloud almost effortlessly. Doing so would require the deaths of "Whaite" and his entire crew, of course. That thought was enough to make Merlin hesitate, but it wasn't as if they were exactly innocent bystanders. Every one of them was a member of the League Navy, and arguably all of them were spies, as well.
Which, Merlin admitted to himself, was really largely beside the point, except for his own desire to justify the action he was contemplating.
He replayed the entire conversation between Makferzahn and Maysahn one more time, then shrugged.
Destroying Sea Cloud wouldn't really do that much for us, he decided. Maysahn's obviously going to be sending follow-up dispatches as he and Makferzahn turn up additional information, anyway. So taking out Sea Cloud would only delay things a bit, unless I'm prepared to start picking off every courier Maysahn and Hektor send back and forth.
He grimaced distastefully at the thought and shook his head.
No. I need to discuss this "vision" with Wave Thunder and Haarahld. They've still got a lot better "ear" then I do for how Hektor's likely to respond. Besides, it's not going to be all that much longer before Erayk gets here for his pastoral visit. That's going to cause more problems than letting this snippet of information get through to Hektor ever could.
And this way, he admitted to himself, at least I won't have to feel like I'm shooting fish in a barrel.
He stopped shaking his head and nodded, satisfied with his conclusion, and turned his attention to the SNARC which kept tabs on Prince Nahrmahn.
JULY, YEAR OF GOD 891
I
Royal Palace,
