.XIX.

HMS Empress of Charis, 58, The Cauldron, and HMS Destiny, 56, Dolphin Reach

“I know we’re lucky to be able to do this, but I still hate it,” Emperor Cayleb Ahrmahk remarked to the swirling wake stretching away behind HMS Empress of Charis.

He stood on his favorite flagship’s stern walk, leaning on the rail while he looked out across the unwontedly calm waters of The Cauldron and Empress of Charis sailed steadily northwest, close-hauled on the starboard tack in the fading light. The galleon was no longer as heavily armed as once she’d been, but Sir Dustyn Olyvyr had learned a great deal from the design of her class. Among other things, he’d learned the limit of the number of heavy cannon he could cram into the length of a wooden-framed ship without its keel hogging under the weight. Despite the reduction in armament that had required in Empress of Charis’ case, the ship Cayleb continued to insist he hadn’t really named after his wife remained one of the most heavily armed vessels on the face of Safehold.

“I don’t like it a lot, either, you know,” Empress Sharleyan Ahrmahk replied.

It was considerably darker aboard HMS Destiny as she sailed equally steadily northeast across Dolphin Reach, already two thousand miles (and three hours) east of Empress of Charis. She, too, occupied her ship’s stern walk, but she wasn’t quite alone. Crown Princess Alahnah drowsed in the hammock cradle beside her, and Sergeant Edwyrd Seahamper stood watch to insure no one disturbed her and her daughter.

“I don’t like it,” she continued, “but you know you are right about how much luckier we are than a lot of people. Mairah, for example. She won’t admit it, but I know how dreadfully she’s missing Hauwerd right now.”

“If it’s any consolation, I think he’s missing her just as badly,” Cayleb assured her with a wry smile. Hauwerd Breygart would be leaving Empress of Charis in the next day or so to continue to Eralth Bay with the Marine expeditionary force, but he’d been Cayleb’s dinner guest every night since they’d left Old Charis. “Big, tough, competent—God, he’d already served, what? Twenty years in the Marines before he ever became Earl?—and all he can talk about over the dinner table is her and the kids.”

“That’s because he’s a good man,” his wife scolded. “Good enough he actually deserves Mairah!”

“I didn’t say he doesn’t,” Cayleb replied mildly. “For that matter, I don’t recall saying my dinner conversation was a lot more varied than his.” His smile turned into a grimace. “We spend enough time talking about things like strategies and tactics during the day, Sharley. Over dinner, we can just be husbands and fathers.”

Sharleyan’s expression softened as she heard the yearning in his voice, and she reached down to lay one hand very gently on Alahnah’s chest, feeling the slow, steady breathing and the heartbeat so precious to her and Cayleb alike.

“I think what irks me the most,” Cayleb continued, “is that we have such a brief window to talk to each other every night. I know—I know! We both just agreed on how lucky we are to be able to do it at all, but having to wait all day, then have so little time together, is … hard.”

“I know.”

Sharleyan moved her hand to Alahnah’s cheek, smiling down at the little girl, then leaned back in her canvas-backed chair. The last time she and Cayleb had been at sea simultaneously—in different ships, that was—their communications schedule had been more flexible. HMS Dawn Star, the galleon which had borne her from Chisholm to Corisande and then, finally, to Tellesberg, was no larger than Destiny, but she’d been far less crowded. Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s flagship—escorted by no less than six other galleons, given her cargo—had surrendered eight main deck guns to free space that could be turned into temporary cabins, but she was still packed tight as a jar of sardines. Sharleyan could no longer rely upon the privacy of her cabin to be certain no one would hear her talking apparently to thin air, and so she and Cayleb could speak only at moments like this, when each of them was alone on the stern walk of his or her galleon.

Fortunately, they’d established the custom, on the occasions when they were aboard ship together, of retiring to the privacy of the stern walk to watch the sun set. They maintained the habit when they sailed separately as well, and their subjects were pleased to be able to give them that small bubble of privacy in which to think about the spouse they missed so badly. Of course, her lips quirked briefly, very few of those subjects and retainers could possibly have guessed just how … closely they thought about one another during those moments.

“Well,” she said more briskly, “I assume you’ve kept up on the SNARC reports? I don’t mean those unimportant ones about things in Siddarmark and Dohlar and Delferahk. I’m talking about the important ones!”

“Would those be the ones about Daivyn and Haarahld getting themselves confined belowdecks all day by Mairah and Captain Yairley for that race up the rigging? Or the ones about Sairaih’s quarrel with Glahdys over who gets to take Alahnah up on deck for her afternoon sunbath every day? Or the ones about just how badly Maikel and Mairah trounced you and Sir Dunkyn at spades yesterday? Or the—”

“How about the ones about your stepson and a certain princess?” Sharleyan interrupted, and Cayleb chuckled.

“Oh, those reports!”

“You do realize how fortunate you are to be safely out of reach at this particular moment, don’t you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Although,” his voice deepened with a note she remembered well—too well, considering the distance between them, “letting you have your way with me after you beat me into surrender for my thoroughly misplaced levity doesn’t sound so bad, now that I think about it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, her prim tone somewhat marred by the twinkle in her eye.

“Oh, of course you don’t. On the other hand, it’s probably better this way, given how crowded Destiny is, I mean. You are a little … noisy at moments like that.”

“Noisy?” Sharleyan shook her head. “You are so going to pay for that one, Cayleb Ahrmahk!”

“I await the moment in cringing trepidation,” he assured her, and she laughed.

“I promise it’s going to be dreadful. But getting back to my original question, what do you think about Hektor and Irys?”

“I never really thought I’d say this, considering our … relationship with her father, but the more I look at it, the more I think they’d both be lucky. I don’t know if they’d be as lucky as we’ve been, but she’s even smarter than I thought, and there’s more going on inside her brain—and heart, I think—than she’s admitted even to Coris. And not just where our Hektor might be concerned, if you know what I mean.”

“Of course I know what you mean.” Sharleyan tugged the blanket more snugly over Alahnah as the evening grew chillier. “I haven’t spent this long with her without realizing that. Or were you of the opinion my brain had ceased to function?”

“Certainly not,” he said virtuously. “I think it’s true, though. I just wish there was a way to peek through her skull and see what’s actually going on inside it.” He shook his head. “Rahzhyr agrees with us about how interested she was in everything she saw at the College, and I’d say she’s refocused every bit of the hate she felt for you and me when she thought we’d had their father assassinated. For that matter, I think she’s added interest to it! But she really is remarkably good at keeping her own counsel. I’d hate to play cards with her for serious money. I’ll bet she could even take Maikel at spades!”

“I’ve noticed the same thing, maybe even more strongly than you have.” Sharleyan shrugged. “I try not to be overly influenced by the similarities between her and me, but sometimes I think even you don’t truly understand what it’s like to be a girl—a young woman—who knows every step she takes is through the middle of a snake pit. It’s not herself she’s worried about, of course, but she’s every bit as aware of how … precarious Daivyn’s position is as I ever was about my own. I understand exactly why she’s giving so little away.”

“I do, too, and I don’t blame her. In fact, I admire her. That doesn’t change the fact that I’d like to know what she’s really thinking, though, and not just because it would give us a better feel for whether or not we should be trying to encourage whatever may or may not be happening between her and Hektor. If she’s leaning the way I think she’s leaning, the advantages could be enormous. But is she really leaning that way, or do I only think she is because we want her to be so badly?”

“One of the reasons I try not to be influenced by those similarities. And even if she is, it doesn’t help that she’s so far below the Brethren’s cutoff age.”

“Sharley, I don’t know if it would be a good idea to tell her the entire—” Cayleb began, but the empress shook her head.

“I’m not proposing to tell her the truth about Langhorne and the other lunatics over tea tomorrow, Cayleb,” she said just a bit tartly. “In fact, I’m not proposing to tell her the truth about any of it without first discussing it with the rest of the circle in ample detail, first. But I will tell you this, Cayleb Ahrmahk—I don’t care if she is ten years short of the official notification age, she’d be a lot better prepared to handle the truth than some of the other people we’ve considered telling. And,” she added with an undeniable note of triumph, “I might point out that neither of us has yet attained that venerable old age of thirty, either. She’s really not that much younger than we are, you know. In fact, unless I my memory fails, she’s several months older than a certain crown prince was when Seijin Merlin first came into his life.”

“As a matter of fact, I do know that. And you may be right about Irys—always assuming her thinking really does go where we think it’s headed. It would give the Brethren fits, though, especially now that we don’t have Father Zhon to knock heads together during one of their anxiety attacks!”

“Now that is not fair, Cayleb,” Sharleyan half laughed. “They don’t suffer ‘anxiety attacks,’ and you know it.” Her humor faded. “Actually, I think a lot of their more recent hesitancy is because Father Zhon was their … touchstone, I suppose. Or maybe their compass. They’d gotten so accustomed to being advised by him, to trusting his judgment, that they’re all second-guessing themselves to make sure they don’t let their own judgment fail them now that they don’t have his to fall back on anymore.”

“You’re probably right,” he said thoughtfully, then snorted. “You and Merlin are both more likely to look at how the minds of people who aren’t doing what I want or need them to do work and why. I’m afraid I have a pronounced tendency to regard them as nails that need to be hammered.”

“Yes,” she said gravely, “I’ve observed what a callous, tyrannical, insensitive sort you are, but I hadn’t wanted to mention it.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. But since you’ve brought it up, has Merlin said anything about the possibility of admitting Irys to the inner circle?”

“No, he hasn’t. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask him until you brought it up just now. And”—a trace of asperity entered his tone—“at the moment, I can’t.”

“What?” Sharleyan’s eyes widened. Merlin made it a habit to stay out of her private conversations with Cayleb unless one of them invited him in, but still.…

“I’m afraid the mysterious Seijin Merlin has retired to his cabin to spend the night in austere meditation,” Cayleb said sourly.

“Oh, Lord!” Sharleyan rolled her eyes. “What’s he really up to this time?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything more about that than I could tell anyone else,” Cayleb said even more sourly. “That’s because he didn’t tell me.”

This time, Sharleyan’s eyes didn’t roll; they widened. It wasn’t unheard of for Merlin to make decisions on his own, or even to undertake errands without discussing them with anyone else first. Sometimes, as in his reaction to Tymahn Hahskans’ brutal murder in Manchyr, even when he expected his decisions might infuriate her and Cayleb. Whatever the rest of the world might think, the two of them—and the rest of the inner circle—knew Merlin’s mission on Safehold went far deeper than obedience to the Crown and trumped even the survival of the Charisian Empire. No one doubted his dedication to Charis, or to his friends, but neither did they doubt Merlin Athrawes would do whatever he decided Nimue Alban’s mission required, no matter the cost. Yet she couldn’t recall a single time when he hadn’t even explained what he was doing—not when there’d been time to explain, at any rate.

“He didn’t tell you anything?”

“All he said was that he had ‘a couple of errands’ he had to run and that he’d tell me about them later, if he could.”

Cayleb’s tone was light, but Sharleyan heard the worry in its depths, anyway. Not because he distrusted Merlin, and certainly not because he was angry at having his authority flouted. No, he was worried for the same reason she was.

What are you up to, Merlin? she asked the silent night. Where are you? And what could be so dangerous you can’t tell anyone about it even now?

A sudden thought struck her, and she started to speak. But she stopped herself in time, swallowing the words unspoken.

Surely not! He wouldn’t—however big the circle’s grown!

She bit her lip, remembering a conversation with Merlin after his return from Delferahk. Remembering what he’d said, the satisfaction in his voice, as he’d talked about the size the circle had attained. About how many native born Safeholdians knew the truth now … about how they could carry on if “something happened” to him.

Merlin. She sent the plea winging out into the gathering darkness. Merlin, don’t start taking chances you wouldn’t’ve taken before just because you think we don’t need you anymore! We do need you, and not just because you’re our magical seijin! We don’t need you as our guide—we need you as you, because we love you.

“Well,” she said serenely to her distant husband after a moment, “I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it as soon as he gets back.”