“Only almost? ” Clyntahn’s eyes narrowed.
“I doubt he’d hesitate for a moment, Your Grace, if it weren’t for the fact that everyone knows he was Hektor’s spymaster-the man who managed Hektor’s assassins, among other things. He has a reputation for personal ambition, and it might occur to him that if anyone was going to be blamed as Cayleb’s tool in Daivyn’s assassination, it would be him. Under the circumstances, I think he’d probably prefer not to give any additional credence to that kind of charge. That assessment is based at least in part on reports from Master Seablanket, our agent in his household.”
“Hmmmmm.” Clyntahn frowned, stroking his chin meditatively, eyes half-closed, for several seconds. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “that might not be such a bad idea. Letting Coris carry the blame for it, I mean.” He smiled thinly. “He and Anvil Rock and Tartarian all worked together with Hektor, after all. Saddling him with responsibility-because he saw it as an opportunity to buy Cayleb’s favor the same way they have, no doubt-would smear the two of them by association, too, wouldn’t it?”
“It certainly might, Your Grace.”
“Do you think Seablanket could handle it?”
“I think he could, but I’d rather not use him, Your Grace.”
“Why not, especially if he’s already in position?”
“Because he’s too valuable, Your Grace. If I’m following your logic properly here, we need for the assassin-or for an assassin, at any rate-to be taken or killed after the boy is dead. Preferably killed, I should think, if we don’t want any inconvenient interrogations. I’d hesitate to use up someone as capable as Seablanket if we don’t absolutely have to.”
“So who would you use instead?”
“My thought at this moment is that we might use a team from the Rakurai candidates you approved but haven’t assigned, Your Grace. I’m sure we could select men who would be prepared to see to it that they weren’t taken alive. In fact, we have several more native-born Charisians available.”
Clyntahn cocked his head, then nodded slowly.
“That would be a nice touch, wouldn’t it?” He smiled unpleasantly. “Of course, it would tend to direct suspicion away from Coris.”
“Only in the sense that it wasn’t actually his hand on the dagger, Your Grace,” Rayno pointed out. “As you suggested, even if he didn’t strike the blow himself, he might have connived with Cayleb. In fact, we might be able to help that perception along a little bit. At the appropriate time, we could instruct him to… creatively weaken Daivyn’s security to let our assassins in. Seablanket’s in a perfect position to pass him the message when we need to, and it won’t hurt a thing at that point for Coris to realize we’ve been watching him more closely than he thought. And after the fact, if we decide to throw Coris to the slash lizard, the fact that he did let the assassins-the Charisian-born assassins-into Daivyn’s presence would be the crowning touch. And if we decided not to throw him to the slash lizard after all, we simply wouldn’t have to mention what he did.”
“I like it.” Clyntahn nodded. “All right, pick your team. We’ll see how public opinion in Corisande reacts to Sharleyan’s executions before we actually order them to proceed, but it won’t hurt to have the pieces in position when the time comes.” . II.
Twyngyth, Duchy of Malikai, Kingdom of Dohlar
Sir Gwylym Manthyr’s eyes opened as the hand shook his shoulder.
On the face of it, it was ridiculous that such a gentle summons could rouse him. Over the last five-day and a half, he’d learned to sleep despite the bone-jarring, jouncing, swaying, rumbling, grating progress of their mobile prison. Just the mind-numbing sound of steel-shod wooden wheels grinding over the hard surface of the royal high road should have been enough to make anything like sleep impossible, but Manthyr was a lifelong seaman. He’d learned to steal precious moments of sleep even in the teeth of a howling gale, and sheer exhaustion made it easier than it might have been otherwise. He’d never been so tired, so worn to the bone, in his entire life, and he knew it was even worse for many of his men.
He looked up into Naiklos Vahlain’s face and opened his mouth, but he had to stop and swallow twice before he could moisten his vocal cords enough to speak.
“What is it, Naiklos?”
“Begging your pardon, Sir, but we’re coming into a town. A big one. I think it’s Twyngyth.”
“I see.” Manthyr lay still for another moment, then reached up and grabbed one of the wagon’s iron bars and used it to haul himself to his feet. He balanced there, despite the shock waves which exploded up his legs and jolted painfully in his spine with the wagon’s motion.
It was odd, a corner of his mind thought. Charis’ highways were adequate to the kingdom’s needs, but nothing like most of the mainland realms boasted. The reason for that, of course, was Howell Bay. Charis didn’t need the sort of road network the mainlanders required, because water transport was always available and far more economical and speedy than even the best of road systems. Despite himself, Manthyr had been impressed by the sheer engineering ability and years of labor it must have taken to build the Dohlaran royal high roads, and their surfaces were hard and smooth, made of multiple layers of tamped gravel rolled out and then covered with slabs of cement.
And that was what was odd. One wouldn’t have thought a surface that smooth could still be uneven, yet judging from the prison wagon’s painful progress, it obviously could.
He rubbed his aching, gummy eyes and peered through the bars.
Naiklos was right; they were approaching a sizable town or city. Once upon a time, Manthyr had been accustomed to judging the size of the cities he encountered by comparison to Tellesberg, yet he’d discovered there were others which were larger still. Cherayth, in Chisholm, for example, or Gorath here in Dohlar. This town was much smaller than that-barely a third the size of Tellesberg-but it boasted fortified, bastioned walls at least twenty or thirty feet tall, and there was obviously artillery atop those walls, which argued for a certain importance. And if Manthyr’s memory of the maps of Dohlar were correct (which it might well not be, since he’d been primarily interested in Dohlar’s coasts), this almost certainly was Twyngyth.
And won’t that be fun, he thought grimly, knees flexing as his weary body anticipated the jolts. It wasn’t like being at sea, but there were some similarities. You had to go and help His Majesty kill that asshole Duke Malikai off Armageddon Reef, didn’t you, Gwylym? I’ll bet his loving family’s been just praying for the opportunity to entertain you on your way through.
“Keep the crowd moving, Captain,” Father Vyktyr Tahrlsahn said. “I’m sure everyone wants to see these bastards, and I want to make sure everyone gets to see them, too. See them from close enough they can smell the vermin’s stink!”
“Aye, Sir.” Captain Walysh Zhu touched his breastplate in salute, but behind that facade of stolid acknowledgment, his brain was busy.
Over the last several days, Zhu had realized Tahrlsahn was even more… zealous than the captain had originally thought. Zhu was as orthodox and conservative as only a Harchongese could be, and he saw no reason heretics should be accorded the protections of honorable prisoners of war. Anyone who gave his allegiance to Shan-wei deserved whatever came his way, after all. On the other hand, Zhu took no particular pleasure from seeing them abused without some specific reason. He’d ordered his Guardsmen to show them why they’d be wise to cooperate that very first day, but there’d been a purpose to that beating, a way to establish discipline without actually killing anyone. And, if he was going to be honest, there had been a certain personal satisfaction in it, as well. Payback for what their bastard friends had done to the Navy of God and the Imperial Harchongese Navy in the Markovian Sea, if nothing else.
But Tahrlsahn sometimes seemed to have trouble remembering they were supposed to deliver their prisoners intact to the Temple. Personally, Zhu estimated they were likely to lose perhaps one in five from sheer exhaustion and privation even under the best of conditions. But they weren’t getting the best of conditions, were they? They’d been scrawny as skinned wyverns when he’d collected them from the prison hulks in Gorath, and Tahrlsahn wasn’t going out of his way to fatten them up since. Zhu suspected there was sickness among them, as well, helping to gnaw away at their reserves of strength, but Tahrlsahn had endorsed Bishop Executor Wylsynn’s ban on providing the “malingering bastards” with healers. And the prison wagons’ jarring ride was far more debilitating than Tahrlsahn seemed to realize.