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For Father George Anson Clarke.
I really did listen that half-century ago, and you were right.
For further relevant maps, please go to http://www.davidweber.net/downloads/index/recent/series:6/key:maps.
OCTOBER
YEAR OF GOD 897
.I.
The Earl of Thirsk’s Townhouse,
City of Gorath,
Kingdom of Dohlar.
“Forgive me for intruding, My Lord, but you and I need to talk.”
The Earl of Thirsk stared at the black-haired, blue-eyed guardsman in his townhouse study. Sheer, disbelieving shock froze him in his chair—a shock deep enough to reach even through the agony of his dead family—because he knew that sapphire-eyed man, and that man couldn’t possibly be here. Not in the middle of the city of Gorath. That man was with his emperor in Siddar City, thirty-four hundred miles from this spot. Everyone knew that. And even if he hadn’t been, there was no conceivable way a man in the livery of the House of Ahrmahk could have traveled into the very heart of the Kingdom of Dohlar’s capital city without being spotted and accosted.
Yet there he stood, and Thirsk felt his good hand fumble at his belt, seeking the dagger that wasn’t there.
“I assure you I intend no harm to anyone under this roof,” Merlin Athrawes continued. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t raise a hue and cry, though.” He stroked one fierce mustachio with a quick smile. “That would get messy, and I’m afraid quite a lot of people would be harmed under those circumstances.”
Rain pelted against the study windows, gurgled in waterfalls from eaves and gutters, swirled down paved streets or cascaded into storm drains, and distant thunder rumbled somewhere beyond the thick clouds of midnight. Streetlights in Gorath were both dim and few and far between, even on nights when pounding rain didn’t reduce visibility still further. Perhaps that might explain how he could have passed through those same streets unnoted. Yet even as the earl thought that, it only created its own preposterous questions, for Athrawes’ blackened chain mail and the black tunic beneath it were dry, and so was his raven-dark hair.
Of course they are, a voice said in the back of Thirsk’s brain. After all, what’s a minor impossibility like that if he can be here at all?
That inner voice sounded preposterously clear, given how much whiskey he’d consumed that evening.
Athrawes closed the door behind him and crossed the study floor, and his gleaming dry boots were silent on the thick carpet. He stopped fifteen feet away, and Thirsk drew a deep breath as lamplight gleamed on the “revolvers” holstered at both hips and the curved blade sheathed across the seijin’s back. God alone knew how many men those weapons had killed, and a chill ran through him as he thought of how the Inquisition would explain how this man might have come to stand before him.
“Does that ‘no harm to anyone under this roof’ apply to me, too?” he heard himself ask, and his voice sounded almost as unnaturally calm as his … visitor’s. “I don’t imagine there’d be many more legitimate targets.”
“Oh, trust me, My Lord.” Athrawes’ smile was thinner this time. “I can think of dozens of targets more ‘legitimate’ than you. Which isn’t to say—” the smile disappeared “—that Charis doesn’t have a few bones to pick with you, too.”
“I imagine.” Thirsk settled back in his chair and his good hand rose to the fresh pain that stabbed through his healing shoulder as he moved. “I won’t blame Cayleb if he’s sent you to deliver the same sentence he’s passed on inquisitors taken in the field. And to be honest, I won’t really mind, either. Not anymore.” His lips twitched in a parody of a smile. “At least I could trust you to be quick, Master Seijin, ‘demon’ or no. That’s more than I could say for some ‘godly’ men I might mention. And it’s not as if you wouldn’t be doing me a favor.”
The other pain, infinitely worse than any physical hurt, roused to ravenous life as the anesthesia of shock began to fade, and the anguish of his family’s death ripped at him with claws of fire and ice.
“I can understand why you might feel that way.”
There was no anger in Athrawes’ tone. Indeed, there was … compassion, and that only made Thirsk’s pain worse. He didn’t deserve any Charisian’s sympathy, not after what he’d allowed to happen to the men who’d surrendered to his navy. He damned well knew that, and he remembered a passage from the Book of Bédard: “Do good to those who despise you and return kindness to those who smite you, and so you will heap coals of fire upon their heads.” He’d heard that scripture countless times in his life, yet until this very moment, he’d never truly understood what the Archangel had meant. But now—as he heard the simple compassion in Merlin Athrawes’ voice, received the gift of sympathy from someone he’d given so many reasons to hate him—his own sense of guilt, the knowledge of how much Athrawes ought to hate and despise him, crashed down upon his soul like Shan-wei’s hammer.
“I can understand it,” Merlin repeated, “but that might be premature. You still have things to do, My Lord.”
“I have nothing to do, Seijin!” Thirsk snapped with a sudden flare of fury spawned by grief … and guilt. “That bastard in Zion’s seen to that!”
“Maybe he hasn’t … quite,” Athrawes replied.
Thirsk stared at him. Athrawes had to know what had happened to his family—the entire world knew that! He opened his mouth to spit back a reply, his face dark with anger, but Merlin raised one hand.
“I’m not here tonight only for Cayleb and Sharleyan, My Lord. I have a message for you from someone else, as well.”
“And who might that be?” Thirsk’s demand was harsh.
“Your daughters, My Lord,” Athrawes said very quietly.
“How dare you come into this house with that kind of—?!”
Thirsk got that far before words failed him entirely. He thrust himself up out of his chair, heedless of the pain in his mending shoulder, confronting the armed and armored seijin—a foot and more taller than he—with no other weapon than his rage.