The man called Merlin Athrawes looked around the sitting room of his guest suite in the royal palace of Tellesberg, capital of the Kingdom of Charis. It was a pleasant, airy chamber, with the high ceilings favored in warm climates, on the second level of Queen Marytha's Tower. It was also comfortably furnished and had an excellent view of the harbor, and a room in Queen Marytha's Tower was an indication of high respect. The tower, where foreign ambassadors were customarily lodged, lay on the boundary between the royal family's personal section of the palace and its more public precincts.
Of course, there were no doors which led directly from the tower into the royal family's quarters, and there just happened to be that permanently manned guard post at the tower's only entrance and exit. Solely, no doubt, to protect the ambassadors' highly respected persons.
Merlin smiled and strolled across to the mirror above the beautifully inlaid chest of drawers in the suite's bedchamber. The mirror was of silver-backed glass, and he studied the surprisingly clear, sharp reflection in its slightly wavery depths almost as if it were a stranger's.
Which, after all, it was in many ways.
He grimaced, then chuckled ruefully and ran a fingertip along one of his waxed mustachios. It was, he was forced to admit, a masterful disguise.
One of the features of a full-capability, last-generation PICA had been its owner's ability to physically reconfigure it. It wasn't a feature Nimue Alban had ever used, but, then, she hadn't used her PICA at all, very often. Certainly not as much as her father had hoped she would. To be honest, she'd known, he would have vastly preferred for her never to have joined the Navy in the first place, and he'd deeply resented the demands it had placed upon her time. He'd loved her very much, and a man of his wealth and position had known the truth about the ultimate hopelessness of the Federation's position early on. She'd suspected that he hadn't intentionally brought her into a doomed world in the first place. That her birth had been an "accident" her mother had arranged, which very probably helped explain their divorce when she was only a child. Even if her suspicions were correct, that hadn't kept him from loving her once she'd been born, but he'd been afraid that as a serving officer in the Navy, she would die sooner than she had to. He'd wanted her to live as long as she could, and to pack as much living as possible into the time she had, before the inevitable happened.
Well, Merlin thought, his smile going bittersweet, it looks like your decision to give me a PICA worked out after all. I'm going to have a very long time to live, indeed, Daddy.
He gazed deep into his own reflected blue eyes, looking for some sign of the biological person he once had been, then brushed that thought aside and gave his mustachio another twirl.
Nimue Alban had never been tempted to shift genders, either in her own biological case, or even temporarily, using her PICA. Others had been rather more adventurous, however, and PICAs had been designed to be fully functional in every sense. And since the technology had been available, the PICA designers had seen no reason not to allow their customers to reconfigure the gender, as well as the general physical appearance, of their marvelous, expensive toys.
Given the male-dominated nature of Safeholdian society, Nimue finally had used the capability.
There were, inevitably, some limitations for even the most capable technology. A PICA couldn't be made significantly shorter or taller than it already was. There was some flex, but not a great deal. Shoulders could be broadened, hips could be narrowed, genitalia and pelvic structures could be rearranged, but the basic physical size of the PICA itself was pretty much fixed by the size of its original human model. Fortunately, Nimue Alban had been a woman of rather more than average height even for her birth society, whose members had been blessed with excellent medical care and adequate diet from childhood. As a woman on Safehold, she would have been a giantess, and "Merlin" was quite a bit taller than most of the men he might meet.
Nimue had added several judiciously placed scars here and there, like the one on Merlin's cheek, as well. Merlin was a warrior, and she hadn't wanted anyone to wonder how someone had attained his years and prowess without ever even being wounded.
The decision to become male hadn't been an easy one, despite the logic which made it effectively inevitable. Nimue Alban had never wanted to be a man, nor had she ever felt any particular physical attraction to women, and looking at Merlin's nude, undeniably male—and very masculine—physique in a full-length mirror for the first time had left "him" with very mixed feelings. Fortunately, Nimue had allowed herself—or, rather, had allowed Merlin—two of Safehold's thirty-day months to become accustomed to "his" new body.
In light of the plan Nimue had evolved, Merlin was impressively muscled. Not so much for brute strength as for endurance and staying power. The fact that a PICA's basic frame and musculature were stressed to approximately ten times the strength and toughness of a normal human and that a PICA never tired were simply two of the little secrets Merlin intended to hold in reserve.
At the same time, accomplishing his mission would require him to earn the respect of those about him, and this was a muscle-powered society in which a man who aspired to influence must be prepared to demonstrate his own prowess. Enough wealth might buy respect, but Merlin couldn't simply appear with bags full of gold, and he certainly had no patent of nobility. His chosen seijin's role would help in that respect, but he would have to demonstrate its reality, and that meant living up to a seijin's reputation, which almost any flesh-and-blood human being would have found . . . difficult.
That was why Merlin had spent quite a bit of time experimenting with the governors on his basic physical capabilities. Nimue had never done a great deal of that, but Merlin was likely to find himself in much higher-risk environments than any into which Nimue had ever ventured in her PICA. More to the point, Merlin's survival was far more important than Nimue Alban's had ever been. So he'd set his reaction speed to a level about twenty percent higher than any human could have matched. He could have set it higher still—his nervous impulses traveled at light speed, through molecular circuitry and along fiber-optic conduits, without the chemical transmission processes upon which biological nerves depended—and he still had that extra speed in reserve for emergencies. But it was only for emergencies, and fairly dire ones, at that; even a seijin would be looked at askance if he seemed too quick and agile.
By the same token, Merlin had adjusted his strength to about twenty percent above what might have been expected out of a protoplasmic human with the same apparent musculature. That left him with quite a lot of literally superhuman strength in reserve, as well, and he'd set the overrides to let him call upon it at need.
It had taken him every day of the five-days Nimue had allowed to learn not simply to move like a man, but to adjust for his enhanced reaction speed and strength. Well, that and the fact that his body's center of gravity had moved vertically upward quite a bit.
He'd spent a lot of that time working out with the katana and wakazashi he'd used Pei Kau-yung's fabrication module to build. He'd had Owl design and actually fabricate the weapons, and he'd cheated just a little bit with them, too. The blades looked like the work of a Harchong master swordsmith, with the characteristic ripple pattern of what Old Earth had called "Damascus steel." They even carried the proof marks of Hanyk Rynhaard, one of the legendary swordmakers of Harchong, but they were actually made of battle steel, orders of magnitude harder and tougher than any purely metallic alloy. Merlin could have had Owl give them an edge which was literally a molecule wide, but he'd resisted that temptation. Instead, he'd settled for one which was "only" as sharp as a Safehold surgeon's finest scalpel for the katana. The wakazashi was quite a bit "sharper" than that, since he anticipated using it only in dire emergencies. The katana would be Merlin's primary weapon, and since it was made of battle steel, he could do little things like using his reserve strength to slice completely through the assassin leader's blade without worrying about nicking or dulling his own.
He intended to make very certain no one but he ever cared for either of those weapons. He also intended to spend quite a lot of time carefully inspecting their edges, honing them on a regular basis, seeing to it that they were properly oiled and guarded against rust, and everything else a blade made of true steel would have required. On the other hand, a seijin was supposed to be a mysterious figure, with more than merely mortal capabilities, and Merlin had no objection to carrying a sword which evoked at least a little awe. That was one reason he'd stayed with the katana, which had no exact counterpart on Safehold. The fact that it was specifically suited to the only style of fencing Nimue Alban had ever studied was another factor, but its exotic appearance should contribute to the image he needed to create.
He chuckled again, then turned away from the mirror with a final stroke for his absolutely genuine—in as much as any of him could be called "genuine"—mustachio. A PICA had fully functional taste buds and a "stomach," so that its owner could sample novel cuisine while running it in remote mode. And since it might well have organic material in the aforesaid stomach, the designers had seen no reason not to utilize that material as efficiently as possible. The nanotech built into what passed for Merlin's digestive tract was fully capable of converting any food he ate into naturally "growing" fingernails, toenails, and hair. It couldn't begin to use all of the food an organic human being consumed in a day, however, and if Merlin was going to be forced to eat regularly—which he undoubtedly was—he'd have to dispose of the unused material at regular intervals.
So I guess I'll still have to hit the head after all, from time to time, he thought with a grin as he strolled back across to the window.
Although Queen Marytha's Tower had long since been renovated into comfortable, modern guest quarters, it had been a portion of the original royal castle's outer walls when it had first been built. The wall of the tower itself was a good meter and a half thick—five feet, he corrected himself irritably, once again cursing that maniac Langhorne for abandoning the metric system—and he pushed the diamond-paned windows open and leaned his elbows on the immensely deep windowsill.
The city made an impressive sight. It was built mainly of stone and brick—the Kingdom of Charis had far better uses for good timber than wasting it building houses—and the area near the waterfront was a vast sprawl of substantial warehouses, shipyards, ropewalks, chandlers, and business offices. Farther inland, away from the warren of taverns, bistros, and bordellos which served the mariners who manned the kingdom's merchant vessels, were the homes of the thousands of workmen who labored in those same warehouses and other establishments. And farther inland still, on the rising land moving away from the harbor along the banks of the Telles River towards the Palace itself, were the townhouses and mansions of noblemen and wealthy merchants.
The city's total population was in the vicinity of a hundred thousand, which made it huge for Charis and much more than merely respectable for Safehold generally. It also meant Tellesberg was completely ringed by farmland whose sole purpose was to keep the city's population fed. Even so, it was necessary to import vast quantities of food on a regular basis. The Charisian merchant marine was more than equal to the task, as long as the Royal Charisian Navy maintained control of Howell Bay, but a hundred thousand was still an enormous population for a city built by a civilization powered only by wind, water, and muscle.
It was also a remarkably clean city. Safeholdian notions of public hygiene and waste disposal were far more stringent than anything Old Earth had known at any comparable technology level. Merlin was delighted that they were, too. The sorts of pestilences and plagues which had routinely swept through preindustrial Old Earth cities were very rare occurrences on Safehold. Besides, it also meant Tellesberg smelled far better than its Old Earth counterparts ever had.
He smiled, but then the smile faded as he saw the church spires which dominated the city's low-lying skyline. He could see literally dozens of them from where he stood, and every one of them was part of the lie which had brought him to Charis in the first place.
On the other hand, he thought, every single one of them has at least one bell in its tower, too. Big ones, at that, and that means foundries. Lots and lots of foundries. That's going to come in handy as hell in the not-too-distant.
The dark blue waters of Howell Bay stretched northward as far as even his eyes could see. The bay was very nearly half the size of Old Earth's Mediterranean. If the body of water called "The Throat" were added, their combined length would have been eighty percent of the Mediterranean's, although they would also have been much narrower. Like the Mediterranean, The Throat and Howell Bay were almost completely landlocked, except where The Throat opened onto the Charis Sea, and they—and the Charis Sea—were utterly dominated by the Royal Charisian Navy.
At the moment.
Merlin pursed his lips and whistled tunelessly as he considered King Haarahld VII's dilemma.
The Kingdom of Charis was one of Safehold's more substantial kingdoms. It had grown, although the local histories didn't remember it exactly that way, out of one of the original colonial enclaves. In fact, the original site for the city of Tellesberg had been chosen by Pei Shan-wei herself, during her terraforming operations.
Given Shan-wei's place in the revised version of Langhorne's religion, it wasn't surprising that no one remembered that, and Tellesberg hadn't been a very large enclave. Most of those had been located on the larger landmasses of Haven and Howard, where the bulk of the planet's population was located even today. Nor had Tellesberg received much in the way of outside support, possibly because of its "parentage." Yet it had grown anyway, slowly but steadily, and it had begun establishing colonies of its own about five hundred local years ago. Those colonies had quickly established their independence as feudal territories in their own right, but Tellesberg had always remained the largest and most powerful of the Charisian states—"first among equals," one might say.
Then, about two hundred local years ago, the House of Ahrmahk had risen to power in Tellesberg under Haarahld III, the present king's direct ancestor. Over the last two centuries, the Ahrmahk dynasty had gradually extended its control over the entire landmass known as Charis Island.
Personally, Merlin considered that something of a misnomer. The "island" in question would have been considered a continent on most planets. Of course, its sparsely inhabited upper third or so was almost completely severed from the rest of it by The Throat and Howell Bay. The mountainous isthmus which connected it to the lower two-thirds and formed the bay's western coast, between the bay and the Cauldron, was barely fifty-five kilometers (thirty-four miles, he corrected sourly) wide at its narrowest point. That upper portion had long been considered a completely separate landmass. In fact, it had been given its own name—Margaret's Land—and only added to the rest of the Kingdom of Charis about eighty local years ago.
Across the Charis Sea lay Emerald Island, about the size of Margaret's Land (and just as sparsely settled), but independent from—and resentful of—Charis. Prince Nahrmahn of Emerald walked carefully around Charis, but his hatred of Haarahld and the huge Charisian merchant marine which dominated the carrying trade of Safehold was both deep and profound. The House of Baytz had acquired title to Emerald less than two generations ago, following the unfortunate demise of every male member of the previous ruling house. As such, Narhrmahn had a lively awareness of how a ruler's fortunes could shift abruptly. That, coupled with the fact that he was, perhaps not unreasonably, suspicious that Charis's long, steady expansion meant the Ahrmahk Dynasty ultimately had designs upon Emerald, as well, only added fuel to his hatred for all things Charisian.
Silverlode Island, southeast of Emerald and directly across the smaller Middle Sea and Windhover Sea from Charis, was almost as big as Charis itself. Combined with Charis, Margaret's Land, and Emerald, Silverlode comprised the thoroughly inaccurately labeled Charisian Archipelago. Silverlode itself was even more sparsely settled than Charis, mostly because of its terrain, which was considered rugged even by Safeholdian standards. What population there was tended to be clustered along the long western coastline, sheltered from the dreadful storms which all too often blew in off of the Carter Ocean, to the southeast. Most of the Silverlode towns, cities, and petty nobles, although nominally independent of the Charisian crown, owed personal fealty of one sort or another to King Haarahld and his house, and, for all practical purposes, they were an integral part of the kingdom he ruled.
It had taken Charis centuries of patient effort to attain her present position, but today she was the unquestioned mistress of Safehold's oceans. Her merchant marine was the largest on the entire planet, by a very considerable margin. Her navy was at least equal to that of any two of her potential rivals, and her wealth reflected that. Yet, for all that, Charis was not quite in the top rank of Safehold's great powers. In many respects, she hovered on the cusp of crossing over to that status, but for the present, she was definitely not in the same league as the densely populated Harchong Empire, or the Republic of Siddarmark or the Desnairian Empire. Or, of course, the Temple Lands.
Fortunately for Charis, none of those great powers, with the possible exception of the Desnairians, had any extensive naval tradition or, for that matter, ambitions. Unfortunately for Charis, the League of Corisande, to the east of Emerald and Silverlode, and the steadily unifying corsair kinglets of Trellheim, even farther to the east, most certainly did. For that matter, so did the Kingdom of Chisholm, which dominated the somewhat larger continent of the same name, not to mention the Kingdom of Dohlar or the Kingdom of Tarot. The latter might be an official ally of long standing, but its present monarch resented the arrangement. Not without some reason, since he found himself virtually a tributary vassal of Haarahld's.
Oh, yes. There were lots of people who had their own reasons for resenting, envying, hating, or fearing Charis. Including, unfortunately, the Church.
Merlin frowned at that thought, watching the busy harbor unseeingly while he contemplated it. He remained unable—or, at least, unwilling—to risk inserting his SNARCs' listening devices into the Temple's precincts. There was simply too much danger that those unidentified power sources might connect to something he really, really didn't want to disturb. But that meant that the one set of meetings he most longed to snoop upon—those of the Council of Vicars—were beyond his reach. He could operate a bit more freely in Zion, farther away from the Temple, but it wasn't the same, because virtually all of the Vicars—the Church of God's equivalent of the college of cardinals—lived in the Temple itself, in the vast, comfortable suites which were part of the original structure.
Lesser prelates, like Charis' "own" Archbishop Erayk, had luxurious lodgings elsewhere in the city, and Merlin was able to listen in on their conversations in the restaurants, coffeehouses, gaming houses, and discreet brothels where much of their business was conducted. He was well aware of the advantages that gave him, but it also made his lack of access inside the Temple even more irritating.
From what he could pick up, however, it was obvious the Church cherished longstanding suspicions about Charis, and he sometimes suspected that dim memories of Shan-wei's initial sponsorship of Tellesberg still lingered. Whether that was so or not, the kingdom's distance from the Temple and Zion would probably have been enough to make the Church wary of its doctrinal reliability, and the local clergy was accustomed to a sort of benign neglect. When it took two months for the Temple to send a message to Tellesberg and receive a reply, there was simply no way the Council of Vicars could keep the local Church as firmly under thumb as it could the clergy of Haven and Howard.
From what Merlin had been able to discover, fears of Charisian heresy were unfounded, but Charisian attitudes were increasingly, if quietly, critical of the Vicars' flagrant abuses of power. No one was going to be stupid enough to say so openly—the Inquisition operated even here, after all—which made it difficult for even Merlin to judge what sort of resentment simmered beneath the surface. But it was enough to bring at least some softly spoken criticism out of the Church's own clergy here in the kingdom, which probably did amount to "heresy" in the Vicars' eyes, Merlin admitted. And it was obvious that the kingdom's steadily growing wealth and international prestige was another factor in the disfavor with which Mother Church regarded Charis.
But while there were many people prepared to resent or envy Charis, there were relatively few, with the probable exception of Greyghor Stohnar, Lord Protector of Siddarmark—effectively, the elective dictator of the Republic—who felt any particular urge to help the kingdom. And Siddarmark, unfortunately, despite the well-deserved reputation of its matchless pike-armed infantry, had no navy beyond a purely coast defense force which Nahrmahn of Emerald could handily have defeated all by himself.
All in all, Charis' future looked rather bleak. Not today. Not this five-day, or possibly even next year, or the year after. But her enemies were drawing the noose steadily tighter about her with what amounted to the Church's tacit approval.
So far, Haarahld's canny diplomacy had managed to stave off outright disaster, but his enemies' recent success in having Tahdayo Mahntayl's claim to the Earldom of Hanth confirmed over that of Hauwerd Breygart marked a serious downturn in his fortunes. Hanth was the largest of the feudal territories of Margaret's Land, and the one which had longest resisted Charisian authority. Having it handed to what everyone recognized, whether they were willing to admit it or not, as a usurper with no legitimate claim to the title would have been a blow to Haarahld at any time. At this particular time, that blow might well prove mortal. Or, at least, the first of the thousand cuts his enemies had in mind for him.
By Merlin's current estimate, it was likely Haarahld would manage to pass his throne and crown to Cayleb. It was unlikely Cayleb would ever pass them to a son or daughter of his own.
Unless something changed.
Merlin straightened, folding his arms as he watched the busy shipping along the wharves and docks of Tellesberg. There was power and vitality in Charis. Harchong was decadent, Desnair was too focused on conquest, and Siddarmark was too preoccupied with securing its own frontiers against the threat of Harchong and Desnair alike. But Charis . . .
There was wealth, art, and literature in Charis. In many ways, the kingdom reminded Merlin of what Nimue had read of Old Earth's England in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Or perhaps Holland of roughly the same time period. There were no burgeoning scientists, for the Church of God Awaiting would never have permitted that, but at the same time, it was obvious to Merlin that Langhorne's plan had begun to slip, if ever so slightly. The critical, challenging mind-set of Old Earth's scientific revolution might not have arisen—yet—but that didn't mean all advances had been frozen.
Here in Charis, for example, there was a yeasty, bubbling ferment, and the Royal College Haarahld's father had founded had gathered together a body of truly formidable scholars. It might be true that none of them had ever heard of the scientific method, but they were deeply devoted to the collection and preservation of knowledge, as well as teaching, and the present king had begun quietly appointing some of his kingdom's best "mechanics" to the College's fellows. The College's collective work helped foster a sense of opening horizons, in applied techniques as well as the traditional humanities, which extended to other aspects of the kingdom's life.
Like the burgeoning industrial base—of sorts, at least—which underlay much of its growing wealth.
The Holy Writ's proscriptions against any sort of advanced technology were unchallenged, even in Charis, but there'd already been a certain amount of . . . leakage. Safeholdian metallurgy, for example, was at the level of Old Earth's early eighteenth century, or even a bit further advanced. And the planet's agriculture—built around the "teaching" of the Archangel Sondheim, disk harrows, animal-drawn reapers, and terrestrial food crops genetically engineered for disease and parasite resistance, not to mention high yields—was productive enough to create a surplus labor force. It wasn't that huge a surplus, as a percentage of the total population, especially not in places like Harchong, where the social structure had stratified centuries ago around a serf-based agricultural economy. It still took a lot of farmers to keep people fed. But there were a lot of artisans almost everywhere, as well, and the situation was even worse, from Langhorne's perspective, here in Charis, whose climate permitted year-round agriculture in much of the island.
Charis was a land with a sparse population and a widespread trading empire. Those factors had conspired to create a degree of inventiveness which would have horrified Langhorne and Bédard, and the Royal College's interest in the mechanical arts had begun to shape and direct that inventiveness. That thought alone would have been enough to incline Merlin favorably towards Charis (and to explain the Church's suspicions of it), even if it hadn't suited the kingdom so well to his needs. If any of Langhorne's sycophants had studied history the way Shan-wei had, he suspected, the Writ would have incorporated far more stringent controls on things like the use of water power. But they appeared to have overlooked the fact that Old Earth's Industrial Revolution had begun with waterwheels, not steam engines, and Charis' "manufactories" were well on the road towards the same destination.
Nor was that the only thing which had slipped through the cracks of Langhorne's great plan. These people had gunpowder, for example. It wasn't very good gunpowder—it was still "meal" powder, weak and dangerous to work with—and they hadn't had it very long, but he rather suspected that the gunpowder genie alone would have been enough to topple Langhorne's neat little scheme, eventually. Merlin wondered exactly how its introduction had gotten past the Church. He suspected that the answer was a fairly massive bribe, probably from Harchong, where it had originally been introduced.
Approving it for any reason struck Merlin as an act of lunacy on the Church's part, given the system it was dedicated to maintaining. But in fairness, the Church might well not have recognized its military potential when it first arrived. As nearly as Merlin could tell so far, it had been introduced primarily for use in mining and engineering projects, not warfare. And even now, eighty or ninety years later, it was obvious Safehold was still feeling its way towards the compound's military applications.
At the moment, their firearms and artillery were about as primitively designed as their gunpowder. The best infantry firearm they had was a crudely designed matchlock, and no one appeared to have thought even of the wheel lock yet, much less the flintlock. Their artillery wasn't much more advanced, conceptually, but that wasn't because their metallurgy wasn't good enough to produce much better weapons . . . assuming someone were to suggest how that might be done. Coupled with the Charisians' manufacturing base, general inventiveness, and tightening circle of enemies, that offered all sorts of possibilities for opening the nascent cracks in Langhorne's foundations just a bit wider.
But even more importantly, there was a social openness in the Kingdom of Charis, as well. No one would ever confuse Charis with a representative democracy. King Haarahld would probably suffer an apoplectic attack at the very notion. But the Royal Charisian Navy had a centuries-long tradition of accepting only the service of freemen, outright serfdom had been abolished in Charis well over a century ago, and by the standard of any other Safeholdian state, Charisian commoners were undeniably "uppity."
Which, coupled with the centrality of trade and traders to Charisian prosperity, helped explain why Haarahld's parliament was an active, vital part of his government. For the most part, it did what it was told, but it zealously guarded its prerogatives, and Haarahld was wise enough to side with the Commons against the Lords sufficiently often to leave no doubt in anyone's mind where the true power lay. For that matter, most of the Charisian nobility was actively involved in trade, without the arrogant hauteur of the landed nobles of Harchong or Desnair. They recognized ability as being just as vital as blue blood. The mere possession of a title did not excuse sloth or indolence, and a Charisian commoner of ability and energy could expect to rise far higher than his counterpart in almost any other Safeholdian realm.
That was why Merlin was here. The basic matrix of Charisian politics and society offered the most fertile soil for the seed he had to plant. There was still the minor problem of Langhorne's insurance policy, which Owl had discovered in his orbital survey. Figuring out a way to deal with that was going to be . . . a challenge. But, even after it was overcome, it was obvious to Merlin that he couldn't possibly try to impose technology upon Safehold, any more than he could single-handedly overthrow the Church. The changes he had to induce must be organic, must grow out of a genuine shift in basic attitudes and belief structures.
Merlin had come to think of himself as a virus. The analogy wasn't perfect, but it worked. By himself, he could accomplish nothing. But if he found the proper cell, invaded it, made it over in the necessary image, it would spread the infection for him. And Charis was the perfect host.
Assuming, of course, that he could prevent its destruction.
Fortunately, he continued to share one common trait with Nimue Alban; both of them had always liked a challenge.