“I’m honored, Sir,” Yairley said after a moment, “although I’m going to hate giving up Destiny. If I may, Lieutenant Lathyk’s overdue for promotion and he-”
“To repeat myself, I did say you’d be giving her up ‘in a manner of speaking,’ Dunkyn. I assumed that given your choice of flagships, you’d probably pick her. Was I correct?”
“Yes, Sir. Of course!”
“Well, unless I’m mistaken, it’s still a flag officer’s privilege to request the flag captain of his choice. Now I’d assumed someone of your well-known demanding disposition wouldn’t have put up with someone like Lathyk unless he was at least marginally competent. If I was wrong, if you really want him promoted to, say, commander and given one of the new brigs instead, I suppose I could go back to His Majesty and change my current recommendation.”
“And that recommendation would be precisely what, Sir?” Yairley regarded his superior with a distinctly suspicious expression.
“That he be promoted to captain immediately and assigned as HMS Destiny ’s commanding officer.”
“Upon mature consideration, Sir, I see no reason you should put yourself to the trouble or inconvenience His Majesty by changing your recommendation.”
“I thought that was how you’d see it.” Rock Point chuckled, then heaved himself to his feet. “Come take a look at the chart.”
He crossed to the table, Yairley at his side, and the two of them gazed down at the huge chart of the Gulf of Mathyas and much smaller Gulf of Jahras. Rock Point leaned over and thumped an index finger on Silkiah Bay.
“As you’ll know better than most, we’ve got an awful lot of ‘Silkiahan’ galleons moving in and out of Silk Town with Charisian cargoes,” he said. “Now, I’ve never been one for subordinating military decisions to economic ones, but in this case we’re talking about a big enough piece of our total trade to make anyone nervous. To be honest, that’s one reason we’ve stayed away from”-his fingertip slid down to the southwest and tapped once-“Desnair and the Gulf of Jahras. We’re not certain why Clyntahn hasn’t made a bigger push to shut down the Silkiahans’ and the Siddarmarkians’ defiance of his embargo, and we haven’t wanted to do anything to draw his attention to Silk Town or change his mind in that regard. It’s not just good for our own manufactories and merchant marine, Dunkyn. It’s steadily undermining the Group of Four’s authority in both the Republic and the Grand Duchy, and it’s simultaneously drawing more and more Siddarmarkians and Silkiahans into our arms, whether they realize it or not.
“Nonetheless,” he tapped the city of Iythria, “it’s time we did something about the Desnairian fleet. Even after the Battle of the Markovian Sea, we actually don’t have much better than parity with the combined Desnairian and Dohlaran fleets. I’d like better numbers than that, of course, but while Gorath Bay and Iythria are barely thirteen hundred miles apart in a straight line, they’re damned near seventeen thousand miles apart as a ship sails. That’s just a tad far for them to be supporting one another if we should decide to concentrate our strength in order to overwhelm one of them in isolation, wouldn’t you say?”
He raised his eyebrows, and Yairley heard something suspiciously like a snort of amusement from Zhastrow Tymkyn’s direction.
“Yes, Sir. I think I’d agree with that,” the newly promoted admiral replied.
“I’m glad to hear that. Because, next month, you’re going to help me take advantage of that little fact. In fact, you’re going to be carrying my dispatches to Admiral Shain ahead of the rest of the fleet… and I’m sending some new ships with you. Which is why you got that memo about the high-angle guns you were wondering about.”
Rock Point smiled, and this time there was no humor at all in the expression. . IV.
Royal College, Tellesberg Palace, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis
Dr. Rahzhyr Mahklyn looked up as someone knocked on his office door.
“Yes?”
“Father Paityr is here, Doctor,” his senior assistant, Dairak Bowave, announced through the closed door.
“Ah! Excellent, Dairak! Please show the Father in!”
Mahklyn stood behind his desk, beaming as Bowave escorted Paityr Wylsynn into his office. It was the first time the intendant had actually visited the Royal College, and Mahklyn knew most of his colleagues were a little nervous about his decision to do so now. They’d skirted the edge of what Mother Church deemed acceptable knowledge for so long that having the official keeper of the Inquisition in Old Charis actually in their midst was… disconcerting.
Of course, those worried colleagues of his didn’t know everything he knew about Paityr Wylsynn.
“Come in, Father!” Mahklyn held out his right hand. “It’s an honor to welcome you.”
“And it’s a privilege to be here, Doctor.” Wylsynn took the proffered hand, and Mahklyn surveyed the younger man’s expression carefully. Wylsynn was obviously aware of his intense regard, but he only looked back, meeting the older man’s eyes levelly. “I’ve been away from my own office too long,” he continued, “but there are times when anyone needs a bit of a sabbatical. A retreat to think things through and settle oneself back down, you might say.”
“I understand entirely, Father. Please, have a seat.”
Mahklyn escorted Wylsynn to the armchairs arranged across a small table from one another near one of the large office’s windows. They sat and Bowave set a tray on the table between them. It held two tall, delicate glasses and a crystal pitcher beaded with moisture, and Wylsynn’s eyebrows rose as he beheld it.
“A sinful luxury, I know, Father,” Mahklyn said wryly. “For decades I was perfectly happy living a properly ascetic scholarly existence in the old College down by the docks. Then it burned to the ground and His Majesty insisted we relocate to the Palace. Little did I realize that would be just the first crack in my armor of austerity!”
He poured chilled lemonade into the glasses, and ice-actual ice, Wylsynn realized-tapped musically against the inside of the pitcher.
“His Majesty insists we take advantage of his hospitality,” the doctor continued, handing a glass to his guest, “which includes the royal icehouse. I tried manfully, I assure you, to resist the temptation of that sinful luxury, but my younger granddaughter Eydyth discovered its existence and I was doomed. Doomed, I tell you!”
Wylsynn laughed and accepted the glass, then sipped gracefully. Ice and icehouses had been much more easily come by in the cool northern land of his birth than in excessively sunny Charis. There was ice on the very tallest mountains even here in Charis and even in summer, but getting to it was far more difficult, and there were no conveniently frozen winter lakes from which it might be harvested, either. That made it a scandalously pricey luxury in Tellesberg.
“Will there be anything else, Doctor?” Bowave inquired, and Mahklyn shook his head.
“No, Dairak. I think the Father and I will manage just fine. If I do need anything, I’ll call, I promise.”
“Of course.” Bowave bobbed a bow in Mahklyn’s direction, then bowed rather more formally to Wylsynn. “Father Paityr,” he said, and withdrew, closing the door behind him.
“This is good,” Wylsynn said, taking another swallow of lemonade. “And I do appreciate the ice, although it’s really too expensive to be wasting on me.”
“That’s what I told Eydyth when she discovered it,” Mahklyn said dryly. “Unfortunately, young Zhan was in the vicinity at the time.” He rolled his eyes. “I think Princess Mahrya’s a very good influence on him in most ways, but he’s acquiring the habit of largesse, especially when she’s looking and he can impress her with it. Mind you, she isn’t impressed by it-she’s too much her parents’ daughter for that sort of nonsense-but he doesn’t realize that yet, and he’s a teenager who’s discovered just how attractive his fiancee actually is. So when he heard me telling Eydyth I thought it would be a bad idea, he insisted we make use of it. And, to be fair, if you pack it in enough sawdust you can actually ship ice all the way from Chisholm to Tellesberg in the middle of summer and get here with as much as half of your original cargo. Which, given the price in Tellesberg, is enough to make a very healthy profit!”