By Heresies Distressed (68 page)

“Oh, of course not,” she agreed, then looked back at Gairaht. “At any rate, Wyllys, the convent's rules are the convent's rules, and I don't intend to argue with them.”

“And how many years has it been since you put yourself to bed?” the commander of her guard detail demanded.

“If you want to be technical about it, I don't suppose I
ever
have . . . except on religious retreats. Which, I suppose I could point out, if I were the sort of person who liked to repeat herself, is what this particular excursion happens to be, now isn't it?”

“And you expect me to believe Sairaih was happy to hear about this, Your Majesty?” the captain asked skeptically.

“While I realize this may be difficult to believe, Wyllys, Sairaih has learned to accept—unlike certain Imperial Guard officers I might mention, if I were the sort of person who did that—that upon occasion I may actually decide to set my royal dignity aside. And, amazingly enough,
she
doesn't argue with me about it.”

Gairaht might have growled something under his breath, but if he had, he'd done it quietly enough Sharleyan could pretend she hadn't heard it. And at least he hadn't called her on her bald-faced lie. While it might technically be true that Sairaih Hahlmyn hadn't
said
anything against her imperial charge's decision to leave her behind aboard HMS
Dancer
, she'd certainly found ample opportunity to make her feelings clear. She probably could have supported herself quite comfortably as an actress, assuming she could have resisted the temptation to overact. Which, judging by this morning' performance, was unlikely.

“I at least wish Lady Mairah were here,” the captain said aloud.

“And if she hadn't taken that tumble and broken her leg when she and Uncle Byrtrym went riding, she would have been,” Sharleyan pointed out.

“You could have asked one of the other court ladies—” he began.

“I'm going to be just fine, Wyllys,” she said firmly. “And I don't intend to spend all night arguing with you about it.”

He gave her one more disapproving glance, then drew a deep breath, puffed out his mustache for a moment, and nodded.

The empress shook her head affectionately. Like most of her guardsmen—and, of course, Sairaih—Gairaht was far more sensitive to the demands of her royal dignity than she was. Perhaps that was because it
was
“her” royal dignity—well,
imperial
dignity, these days—and not theirs. She'd learned very early that she couldn't afford to allow her dignity to be undermined by the real or apparent slights of others. Whether or not she wanted to be hypersensitive in such matters was actually beside the point, given the importance of appearances in the world of political calculations. Yet a reputation for humility could also be valuable, under the appropriate circumstances, and the opportunity to step back from her persona as queen or empress, even briefly, was literally beyond price. That was one reason she'd been fond of occasional religious retreats ever since the day she'd assumed the throne of Chisholm. The opportunity to slip the day-to-day secular demands of her crown and spend some time contemplating the demands of her soul, instead, had always been welcome. And the opportunity to stop standing upon her dignity, however fleetingly, had been almost equally welcome.

Gairaht and Seahamper knew that as well as she did, and they'd had conversations very like this one many times in the past. It was an old and familiar topic, and her uncle always tended to weigh in on their side, shaking his head and wondering rhetorically why she hadn't simply gone ahead and taken vows herself.

She smiled at the memory, but the smile was brief as she remembered their estrangement. He hadn't accompanied her to Saint Agtha's, although she'd invited him, hoping the opportunity might draw them closer once more. His refusal had been polite but firm, and she wondered if it would have hurt less if she hadn't suspected that he'd sensed the same possibility . . . and wanted to avoid it.

They arrived at the guesthouse, and she reached out to lay an affectionate hand on Gairaht's arm.

“You, Wyllys Gairaht, are a fussbudget,” she told him.

“As Your Majesty says.” The stiffness in the guardsman's voice was belied by the twinkle in his eye, and she squeezed his mailed forearm.

“Exactly. I'm the Empress around here, after all. And, I assure you, I'll manage just fine in my lonely little convent cell. If I should suddenly discover that I'm physically incapable of getting myself into bed, I know that all I have to do is call out and my stalwart guardsmen will charge fearlessly to my rescue.”

“Your Majesty, physical danger is something any guardsman is pledged to face on your behalf,” Gairaht said gravely. “I'm afraid helping you prepare for bed
isn't
.”

“Coward.” She smiled, then took her hand from his elbow, and glanced at her confessor.

“Are you ready for bed, Father?” she asked, and he nodded.

“There, you see, Wyllys? I'll have at least one loyal soul close at hand if I should suffer some terrible nightmare!”

“And I'm very happy for you, Your Majesty,” he assured her.

“Thank you,” she said, and stepped through the guesthouse door. The priest stayed long enough to exchange commiserating smiles with her armsmen, then followed her inside and closed the door behind him.

Gairaht and Seahamper exchanged silent but eloquent glances of their own, then shrugged as one.

“Captain, you're not going to change her at this date,” Seahamper pointed out.

“Of course I'm not, but she'd be disappointed if I stopped trying, and you know it!”

Seahamper chuckled, then looked around the convent grounds.

Saint Agtha's was located in the Styvyn Mountains above the Earldom of Crest Hollow's Trekair Bay, on the narrow isthmus dividing Howell Bay from the Cauldron. The voyage from the capital aboard Captain Paitryk Hywyt's fifty-six-gun galleon HMS
Dancer
had been a welcome diversion. The ride up the narrow, twisting track which served Saint Agtha's and the farmsteads around it had been rather more strenuous, but still enjoyable, and the convent's elevation was sufficient to actually give the gathering evening a bit of a bite.

Probably just my imagination
, the sergeant thought.
I'm a northern boy, and I think I've been away from home way too long if
this
feels chilly to me!

“Any special concerns, Sir?” he asked Gairaht after a moment.

“No, not really,” the captain replied, carrying out his own survey of the convent. “In some ways, I wish she'd listened to the Duke and brought along even more men, but I think we're in pretty good shape, Edwyrd.”

“Yes, Sir,” Seahamper agreed.

“All right, then,” Gairaht said more briskly. “I'll make one more check of the perimeter, then hand over to the Lieutenant and turn in. Call me if you need me.”

“Yes, Sir,” Seahamper said, exactly as if Gairaht hadn't told him exactly the same thing scores of times before. The captain smiled at him, then headed out into the gathering dusk.

Thunder rumble-grumbled from the west, and Seahamper grimaced. It rained a lot in Charis, especially by the standards of someone who'd grown up in Chisholm. From the sound of things, it intended to do some more of that raining tonight.

Wyllys Gairaht heard the same sound of thunder as he stepped out through the convent's open gate, nodded to the ten men posted there with Lieutenant Hahskyn, his Charisian-born second-in-command, and turned to his right.

The ancient stone wall around the convent proper was more for privacy than any sort of genuine security. He was glad enough to see it, he supposed, but it would have been far more useful if it had been either a little shorter or else enough wider and taller that he could have put men on top of it. As it was, it was just high enough that the men on the outside were effectively separated from those on the inside, and that they'd have to use one of the three gateways to get past it in any sort of a hurry.

The main gate, in the southern wall, was wide enough for heavy freight wagons. There were smaller, merely human-sized gates in the western and northern walls, and all three of them had stood open when the Imperial Guard's advance elements had arrived. They'd promptly collected the keys to the smaller gates from the abbess, who had surrendered them readily enough. However intractable she might be about the convent's rules where servants were concerned, she clearly understood the realities of providing proper security for her empress. And, Gairaht reflected gratefully, despite the fact that she'd been the abbess of Saint Agtha's for almost twenty years, she was obviously one of the Charisians who had enthusiastically embraced the Church of Charis, as well. He'd been more than half afraid they'd been going to encounter someone with Temple Loyalist sympathies.

He reached the corner of the wall, made another right, and started through the fruit orchard outside the western wall. The abbess had been a bit dismayed by the size of Empress Sharleyan's guard detail. Convents weren't exactly accustomed to playing host to men with weapons, and her housing arrangements hadn't been up to the arrival of eighty armed and armored Imperial Guardsmen. She'd attempted to hide her dismay when they turned up, but she'd obviously had no idea where to put them, and she'd gratefully accepted Gairaht's suggestion that perhaps his men might camp in the meadow just beyond the orchard. A deep, rapidly flowing stream offered plenty of fresh water, and the location was convenient to the convent's inner grounds by way of the smallish western gate. The fact that its location also happened to give some additional security to that gate was simply a welcome side effect.

At the moment, half the detail was preparing to settle down in tents and bedrolls. In six hours, they'd be roused to relieve the duty watch, and he hoped their ability to sleep wouldn't find itself too sorely taxed if the evening's weather turned as interesting as it was threatening to do. No guardsman would ever be encouraged to sleep too deeply, but adequate rest was important if they were going to stay alert in the middle of the night, and thunderstorms were seldom exactly restful for men sleeping in canvas tents.

The eight-man watch on the western wall was satisfyingly difficult to spot. Two of its men were easy enough to find, openly sweeping back and forth along the foot of the wall with their bayoneted rifles on their shoulders. The other six, however, had found proper concealment, allowing them to maintain their over-watch without revealing their own positions to anyone who might happen by. The sergeant in charge of the detail emerged from the shrubbery to salute as Gairaht walked by, and the captain returned the courtesy.

The northern wall's duty section was equally alert, equally focused on its responsibilities, and Gairaht felt a deep pride in all of his men. Half of them were Chisholmians; the other half were native-born Charisians, and without actually hearing their accents it would have been impossible for any outsider to pick them out from one another. There'd been a certain amount of friction when the guard details were combined to form the new Imperial Guard, but these were all elite troops. They'd settled down quickly, united by their responsibilities and their pride in the fact that they'd been found worthy to guard the empress from harm.

He started his swing along the eastern wall, heading back towards the southern wall and the main gate. This was the shortest of the convent's walls, and he was just as happy that it was. The last of the sunset's bloody light, oozing ominously through the narrow chink between the storm clouds and the Styvyns' summits, was fading quickly, and the trees on this side of the convent—mature-growth forest which had never been logged off, unlike the neatly ordered fruit trees of the orchard—stood back fifty or sixty yards from the wall. The shadows underneath them were already impenetrable, and they loomed like a dark, vaguely sinister barrier, or some sort of crouching monster. The thought made Gairaht uncomfortable, and he brushed it aside impatiently as he finished checking the last post on that side and headed for the front gate.

You've got entirely too active an imagination, Wyllys
, he told himself firmly.
That's probably better than being too stupid to worry about the obvious, but it's not exactly
—

The steel-headed arbalest bolt that came hissing out of the darkness under those trees struck him squarely in the throat and interrupted his thoughts forever.

Bishop Mylz Halcom forced himself to sit serenely at the roughly made table in the farmhouse a mile and a half from the Convent of Saint Agtha. What he really wanted to do was to pace furiously back and forth, expending physical energy in an attempt to work off the nervous tension coiling deep within him. Unfortunately, he couldn't do that.