“First, My Lady,” he said calmly, “I didn’t have to personally deliver your message to your father; Seijin Merlin did that.” He smiled considerably more broadly than she had. “It seemed to us that the Earl might find it easier—or at least marginally less difficult—to accept the word of a seijin he’d personally met than of someone who simply walked in and announced you’d sent him.”
“Merlin?” Her gray eyes widened. “But he’s—”
She cut herself off, and he nodded.
“You were about to say that he’s in Siddar City with Emperor Cayleb.”
“Since you brought it up, yes, I was, which brings me back to that adjective—the ‘miraculous’ one—I used a moment ago.” She regarded him narrowly. “I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I wonder how he could possibly have reached Gorath from there? Particularly with my letter to Father in hand?”
“Well, Siddar City is better than a thousand miles closer to Gorath than Green Tree Island is,” he pointed out with a lurking smile. Then his expression sobered. “My Lady, I understand exactly why you used the word ‘miraculous,’ just as I know the other sorts of adjectives you might have used instead. And in some ways, I wouldn’t have blamed you, given how many lies—even more of them than usual—Clyntahn’s spun about Merlin and the rest of us. But while that man wouldn’t recognize the truth, much less the true will of God, if it walked up and bit him, the truth is that we do have certain advantages over other messengers. We seldom display them openly—or any more openly than we can avoid, at any rate—because of those lies of his. In this instance, however, Merlin and the Emperor decided to make an exception to the rules. I won’t pretend their motives were completely altruistic, but I will say that reaching your father with the news that you were still alive as quickly as we could, to spare him as much pain as we could, was a factor in their thinking. As for how your letter reached Merlin before he set out for Gorath himself, there are such things as messenger wyverns, you know.”
“I suppose there are.”
Stefyny glanced quickly at Mother Superior Ahlyssa, but if the nun was perturbed by the suggestion that the seijins serving Charis truly were capable of superhuman feats, there was no sign of it in her calm expression.
“I suppose there are,” Stefyny repeated, turning back to Cyfiawnder. “And while a dutiful daughter of Mother Church probably shouldn’t admit it, I wouldn’t be terribly astonished to discover that that lying bastard in Zion truly has lavished a few of his lies on you and Seijin Merlin.”
“My father always told me you could tell even more about someone by the enemies he made than by the friends he kept,” the seijin said.
“My father told me much the same thing, upon occasion.” She smiled again, briefly. “And speaking of fathers, how did mine react to the news?”
“I think it would be best to let him tell you that in his own words,” Cyfiawnder said gently, reaching into his tunic. “He didn’t have a great deal of time in which to write, under the circumstances, but Merlin promised we’d deliver his reply to your letter, as well.” He extended an envelope to her. “I wish there had been time for him to write a longer response,” he said seriously. “Still, I hope this will ease your heart at least a little. There are several things you and I need to talk about while I’m here, but I think they can wait until after he’s spoken to you.”
Despite her formidable self-control, Stefyny’s fingers trembled as she took the envelope from him. She held it in both hands, staring at him, and then her eyes flicked to the mother superior as Ahlyssa cleared her throat.
“My dear,” she said, indicating the door behind her desk, “why don’t you retire to my private chapel while you read that? And don’t rush yourself, child! Seijin Cleddyf and I will keep one another entertained until you’ve had time to fully digest it.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Stefyny said gratefully, and glanced back at Cyfiawnder. “And thank you, Seijin, as well.”
“Go, read your letter.” The seijin smiled at her. “As Mother Ahlyssa says, we’ll be here when you’ve finished.”
She nodded, still clutching the envelope in both hands, and vanished through the chapel door.
Cyfiawnder watched her go, then crossed to gaze out one of the study’s windows across the manicured lawn of St. Kahrmyncetah’s Abbey while he thought about the woman who was even then opening that envelope. He could have watched her through one of the SNARCs’ remotes, but he spent too much time spying on people already. There was no need to play the voyeur this time, and Stefyny Mahkswail—yes, and her father—deserved for her to read his letter in privacy.
“How would you say they’re adjusting?” he asked over his shoulder, and Mother Ahlyssa stood and walked around her desk to join him.
“As well as anyone might have expected.” She shrugged. “Certainly better than anyone could have counted on! After all, it’s been a bit difficult for me to accept there are true seijins once more walking the living world in my lifetime, and I had Mother Nynian’s letters to help.”
She snorted, and Cyfiawnder chuckled softly as he nodded in acknowledgment of her point.
It’s a good thing she did accept it, too, he thought. Of course, most of the Sisters of Saint Kohdy seem to be rather more … flexible-minded than other people. I suppose that’s a requirement for the Sisterhood, when you come down to it.
St. Kahrmyncetah’s Abbey—and the true ironic appropriateness of that name hadn’t struck him until he’d accepted the miniature of Stefyny’s mother from her as her token to her father—was far from the largest religious institution on the face of Safehold. It was bigger than many abbeys, or even a few full-scale convents, perhaps, but certainly not huge, although many of those larger, grander convents would have envied the sheer beauty of the spectacular view laid out before the mother superior’s window. The abbey looked down from its perch in the Talon Branch Mountains on Green Tree’s northern coast across the deep blue of Markys Bay, stretching to the sun-drenched horizon, and the steep slopes of even taller mountains rose behind it like huge, sleeping dragons furred in lush, green trees. It was officially affiliated with the Order of Pasquale, and all of its sisters truly were Pasqualates. The majority of them, however, were also Sisters of Saint Kohdy, which made it a bit easier for them to accept the extraordinary comings and goings of “seijins” in general. Unfortunately, not all of them were adherents of the outlawed saint, and the number who weren’t had risen over the last year or two as the abbey’s mother order reinforced it in light of Green Tree’s recent upsurge in immigration.
Green Tree Island had long been a place of refuge, and many a would-be refugee had paid a steep price to reach it. The Straits of Queiroz, which separated it from the Harchongese province of the same name, were almost two hundred miles wide. That was enough to pose a formidable challenge, and over the centuries, hundreds—probably thousands—of Harchongese serfs and their children had drowned trying to cross it. But other thousands had succeeded, fleeing the Empire’s repressive regime, and they and their descendants had emerged with the kind of stubborn independence that sort of test engendered. They were, he thought, quite possibly the only people he’d ever met who were even stubborner—in their own very Harchongese way—than Zhasyn Cahnyr’s Glacierhearters. The flow had eased considerably over the last century or so, as the institution of serfdom had lost much of its rigor in South Harchong. But there’d still been a steady trickle, including hundreds of serfs who’d somehow made their way south from North Harchong, where the institution remained at least as harsh as it ever had been. No one knew exactly how the story of Green Tree had made its way into the folklore of those brutalized serfs, but somehow it had, and as the jihad’s intensity grew and worsened, the refugee volume had begun growing again.