I should have, he thought now, staring down into the beer mug. God forgive me, I should have. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
He took another swallow of beer, trying to wash away the sour taste in his mouth, the knowledge that he’d failed God and the Archangel Schueler. And he wasn’t even positive why. He knew his mother still loved his father dearly, despite Rahzhyr’s lack of conviction. That was the reason he hadn’t informed the Inquisition. He was sure of it. And yet…
Memories flowed through him. Memories of a time when he’d been a boy, not a young man faced with his father’s weakness. Memories of riding on his father’s shoulders, laughing as his father tickled him or wrestled with him. Memories of his father’s hands teaching him the use of plane and miter saw and lathe. Memories of when Rahzhyr Dahnvahr was the tallest, strongest, smartest, most handsome man in all of Ainsail’s world. And as those memories glowed through his mind once more, the suspicion returned. It wasn’t his mother’s love for his father which had made him too weak to do what he knew he should have done.
Well, no mortal man was perfect. Not his father, and certainly not him. But if he was as strong as he could be, and if he truly trusted in God, then he would find he had strengths as well as weaknesses, and he would learn how to use the steel in his soul to offset the soft and flabby iron. And whatever his father’s faults, however badly his father might have failed or the weakness of his father’s convictions, there was nothing wrong with Ainsail’s faith. He’d proven that to Archbishop Wyllym’s satisfaction, and Vicar Zhaspahr had personally chosen him for his mission. That was enough to awaken the sin of pride in any man, however hard Ainsail might fight against it. But perhaps God would forgive him a little pride. And it wasn’t as if Ainsail could have accomplished his purpose without the aid of dozens of others, most of whom he’d never met and none of whom knew who he truly was.
“’Nother round, dearie?” the plump barmaid asked him brightly.
“Yes, I think so,” he replied, setting the empty mug on her tray and dropping a silver tenth-mark beside it. Her eyes widened at the size of the coin, and she started to hand it back to him, but he put his own hand on top of it. “Keep it,” he said, and smiled at her. “I’m leaving on a long voyage, and I won’t have anywhere to spend it anyway. Besides, you can wish me luck for it, if you like.”
“Oh, that I will!” she assured him with a broad smile. “And I’ll have that new beer back to you quicker than a cat lizard could lick her ear, Sir!”
“No ‘sir,’” he told her. “Just a simple sailorman.”
“Not to me, you’re not,” she assured him.
From the glow in her eye she would have been perfectly prepared to demonstrate that to him, as well, but he only smiled and made shooing motions to send her on her way. Not that it wasn’t tempting, but there were other and far more important things to concentrate on at this moment. In fact, it had probably been foolish of him to give the girl such a lavish tip. It might make her remember him later, not that “later” was going to be a problem. Besides, he’d been sent on his way with plenty of cash and, as he’d told her, he wouldn’t have any place to spend the rest of it.
He leaned back in the ancient, leather-upholstered booth, smelling decades of pipe smoke, of beer, of fried sausages, fish, potatoes, and spider crabs. It was a comforting, homey kind of smell that soothed his nerves. And he had to admit there was something soothing about the ebb and flow of the conversations around him, as well.
He’d never quite fitted in in the Temple Lands, with his “islander” accent. The other boys his age had been merciless about teasing him over it, and there’d been several fistfights-one of them fairly spectacular, culminating in an uncomfortable interview with the city guard-before they’d finally learned better. But no matter how hard he’d tried, he hadn’t been able to rid himself of that telltale accent, and in the end that had proven a good thing. It had helped him slip seamlessly back into the land of his birth, yet he was still more than a little amused by how right the dialect he’d tried so hard to eradicate in himself sounded falling upon his ear from others.
Well, it’s not as if they’re all heretics and blasphemers, now is it? he asked himself. There are plenty of Faithful still right here in Charis. They’re just afraid to show it, that’s all. Wave Thunder’s damned spies are everywhere. They’ve managed to sniff out every organization the Grand Inquisitor’s tried to establish here, so of course the Charisian Temple Loyalists are afraid to trust anyone enough to organize any kind of effective resistance!
For that matter, he reminded himself, there had been Charisian Loyalists who’d dared to raise their hands against their heretical, excommunicate king and his apostate bride. They’d almost gotten that bastard Staynair in his own cathedral! And they’d come within inches of getting Sharleyan at Saint Agtha’s. And then there’d been the man who’d made his own mission possible.
“Here you are, dearie,” the barmaid said, sliding the fresh beer onto the table before him. She’d added a complimentary bowl of fried potato slices, and he smiled his thanks as he popped one of the fresh, piping hot slices into his mouth. In fact, it was hot enough he had to follow it rather quickly with an extinguishing swallow of beer.
“Good!” he told her, nodding enthusiastically even as he puffed out air to cool his scorched tongue and lips. “Hot, but good.”
“Not the only thing here you could say that about,” she told him with a saucy wink, and headed back off through the early evening crowd with an even saucier swing of her hips.
He smiled after her, but then the smile faded as he thought about how far he’d come. Not much further to go, though, he thought. Not much further at all.
He never would have admitted it to a soul, but he’d had more than a few reservations after his mission had been fully explained to him. Not about the mission itself, but about the complexity involved in getting him into position and preparing the way for it. The thought of returning to Charis completely on his own would have been enough to make anyone nervous. The fact that he was strictly prohibited from actually contacting any of the people who’d made his trip possible or contributed to the arrangements here in Charis had produced even more anxiety. He had to simply trust that each of the people responsible for moving him along would do his-or her, for all he knew, in some cases-part and that none of the details would go astray. The notion that such a complex set of arrangements could possibly work had seemed absurd, but as Archbishop Wyllym had pointed out, the Inquisition had been conducting similar operations for centuries. Perhaps not under conditions quite this extreme, but close enough to give them the expertise they needed once they’d realized what an efficient counter-spying organization they were up against here in Charis.
And there hadn’t been all that many people involved, not really. It only seemed that way to him because he’d had to rely on them so blindly. But that very blindness had been his own best defense, because they hadn’t known him, either. For that matter, they hadn’t even known why they were doing what they’d been assigned to do. Not only that, every one of them had done his or her job exactly as Ainsail had-with no contact with anyone else in the service of Mother Church from the moment they or their instructions left Zion. No one would overhear any conversations or intercept any communications between them because there were no conversations or communications. There were only Ainsail and his fellow volunteers (none of whom had ever met, so far as he knew, even in Zion) and the detailed directions they’d been given before they were sent out.
When the Charisian powder mill blew up, Ainsail had been certain the entire operation had gone up in the same explosion. He had no idea who the Inquisition’s contact inside the Charisian Navy was, yet it had been obvious there had to be one. And when he’d heard about the explosion-he’d still been in Emerald at the time, waiting for the brig to carry him for the final leg of his wearisome journey from Zion-he’d realized that whoever the contact was, he must have been unmasked somehow. And that meant he hadn’t been able to complete his part of the preparations.