Including Cayleb, she thought sadly. Her husband had never explicitly mentioned her uncle's feelings, but the very way he hadn't mentioned them told someone as perceptive as Sharleyan a great deal.

"He's not the only one, either," Seahamper said, finally permitting himself to actually voice at least a part of what concerned him. "I'm no lord, Your Majesty, nor likely to be one. God knows, I've never even wanted to be an officer! But I've guarded your back since you were a girl, and maybe I've learned a thing or two along the way, whether I wanted to or not. And there are people in Chisholm who don't like this marriage, this new 'Empire,' one bit. And they won't like it, wherever it goes."

"I know there are." She folded her arms under her breasts and turned back to him. "More of them in the nobility than among the commoners, I think, though."

"With all due respect, Your Majesty, it's the nobility that worries me most," Seahamper said frankly.

"And rightly so, I suppose. Goodness knows we're a lot more likely to see scheming nobles than any sort of spontaneous popular rebellion. Against the Crown, at least. But even if Chisholmians aren't as 'uppity' as Charisians- yet!-they're still a lot less hesitant about making their feelings felt than the subjects of a lot of other kingdoms. That's something Uncle Byrtrym himself helped the nobility learn it has to keep in mind."

Seahamper nodded slowly, although his expression was still worried. She had a point. The common folk of Chisholm had taken their "girl queen" to their hearts when her father died. The fact that Queen Mother Alahnah had been enormously popular hadn't hurt, of course, but it had been the dauntless courage they'd sensed in the "mere slip of a girl" upon whom the crown had so unexpectedly and suddenly descended which had truly won them. And the magic had never faded. Even now, when he knew so many of them cherished reservations about her open defiance of the Church, that deep reservoir of love had carried them with her.

But even the ocean has a bottom, he told himself, trying to keep the worry he felt out of his expression.

"I'm just. . . not happy about being away from home so long, Your Majesty," he said.

"What? No fear of fanatical Charisian assassins, loyal to the Church?" she teased.

"As to that, I've fewer worries in that regard than I had before we arrived, and that's no lie." He shook his head, smiling ruefully. "I'll confess it, Your Majesty. I don't know how you do it, but you've got the Charisians eating out of your hand, too!"

"Nonsense." It was her turn to shake her head, and she did, rather more forcefully than he had. "Oh, I won't deny they've taken me to their hearts, but that has less to do with me than it does with Cayleb, I think. They truly love him, you know. I think they'd have been prepared to welcome anyone if they thought she'd make him happy."

"Aye?" Seahamper quirked one sardonic eyebrow. "And the fact that the beautiful young sovereign queen of another kingdom, thousands of miles away, chose to make their quarrel with the Church hers had nothing to do with it?"

"I didn't say that."

"No, you didn't," Seahamper snorted. "Still and all, I'm less anxious than I was, and that's a fact. Of course, it doesn't hurt any that the Royal-I mean Imperial-Guard knows exactly how unholy a disaster it would be for Charis if they let anything happen to you! I don't think your folk back home would take that kindly, at all."

"No, I don't imagine they would," she agreed with a quirky little smile.

"And with good reason," Seahamper growled, his expression turning sober once again. Then he cocked his head. "Still," he conceded, "I'll not deny I was relieved once I got their measure."

"You're admitting you're impressed by someone else's armsmen?" She stepped back, leaning dramatically against the battlements for support as she pressed one hand to her heart, her eyes wide, and despite himself, he chuckled. But he also shook his head reprovingly at her.

"It's no laughing matter, Your Majesty, and well you know it. And if you didn't, Baron Green Mountain does! Would you like to hear what the Baron had to say to me before we left for Tellesberg?"

"Actually, no." She grimaced. "I expect he said a lot of the same things to me, if not quite so forcefully. Although, you know, the real reason he was so . . . cranky was my decision to leave him home in Cherayth."

" 'Cranky,' was he, Your Majesty?" Seahamper snorted again.

"Among other things. But he also admitted I was right, finally. I had to leave him to keep an eye on things."

"What you mean, Your Majesty," Seahamper said a bit grimly, "is that he's the only man you can trust out of your sight for four or five months at a time."

"Well, yes," Sharleyan acknowledged.

"I think that's what worries me most, Your Majesty," Seahamper said frankly. "I'm not truly concerned for your safety here in Charis. If I'd been inclined to stay that way, Captain Athrawes would've cured me by now. That man's even more impressive than the tales about him, in some ways. But I am worried about what's happening in Chisholm while we're here."

"To be honest, that's my worst concern, as well." She glanced back out across the harbor. "But it's a chance we have to take, and at least I have mother and Mahrak to manage things for me while I'm in Charis. And, to be honest, I think Cayleb is right. One of us has to be the first to spend time in the other's kingdom, and given the decisions that have to be made-and the fact that even the most dull-witted nobleman in Cherayth must know that at this moment Charis is the military linchpin-it has to be me in Charis, and not him in Chisholm."

"I know that, Your Majesty." He surprised her just a bit by sweeping her a bow. "I only hope you're right about the Baron's ability to juggle all the dragon's eggs we left behind."

"So do I, Edwyrd," she said softly, her eyes once again on the anchored galleons so far below. "So do I."

"May I have a moment, Merlin?"

Merlin turned at the question and found himself facing Commodore Seamount. The rather portly officer-in some ways, Merlin had decided, Seamount reminded him of Prince Nahrmahn-had a fat folder under his left arm and the right sleeve of his uniform tunic was thickly smudged with chalk dust, a sure sign he'd been in his office above the Citadel's main powder magazine scrawling diagrams, questions, and notes on its slate-covered walls.

"Of course, My Lord." Merlin bowed slightly, and Seamount snorted.

"There's no one else watching us," he pointed out. Merlin straightened and arched one eyebrow, and Seamount shrugged. "I appreciate the courtesy, Seijin Merlin, but don't you and I have better things to do with our time than waste it bowing and scraping?"

"Courtesy, My Lord, is never wasted," Merlin replied a bit obliquely.

"Smoothly put, Seijin" Seamount chuckled. Merlin gazed at him for a moment longer, then gave up.

"Very well, My Lord. What is it I can do for you today?"

"That's better!" Seamount grinned, then pulled the folder out from under his arm and waved it in the general direction of Merlin's nose.

"I take it there's something inside the folder?" Merlin asked politely.

"Yes, there is. These are my latest notes on the artillery project."

"I see." Merlin's lips twitched, and he tugged at his waxed mustachio. "Ah, just which artillery project would that be, My Lord?"

"All of them!" Seamount said impatiently, and Merlin shook his head.

The official reason for Cayleb and Sharleyan's visit to Helen Island was to sit down with Bryahn Lock Island, General Chermyn, their senior officers, and their staffs to finalize their plans for the invasion of Corisande and officially set that project in motion. Or, rather, to discuss the changes those plans would require in the wake of the Ferayd Massacre, as it was already coming to be known. They wouldn't be boarding any troops for quite some time, after the way Admiral Rock Point's punitive expedition had been given priority over everything else, and in some ways that was a good thing. It gave them more time to deal with the inevitable last-minute snafus, at any rate.

The real reason for the trip to Helen, though, in a lot of ways, was that Sharleyan had wanted to see the place where so many of the innovations which had spelled Charis' survival had been hatched. And then, of course, there'd been the fact that Cayleb was never shy about seizing upon any opportunity to get out of the palace.

The actual meetings with Lock Island, Chermyn, and their officers had gone more smoothly than Merlin had allowed himself to hope they might. No one in Charis (or anywhere else on Safehold) had ever attempted to project a fifty thousand-man invasion army across thousands upon thousands of miles of seawater. On the other hand, the Royal Charisian Navy had amassed a vast amount of experience when it came to handling purely naval logistics. The unavoidable delay imposed by Ferayd had helped, as well. It had not only given them more time to finish building the invasion force's weapons-from flintlock rifles, to breastplates, to saddles and bridles, to Seamount's field artillery-but had given the invasion planners additional time to go over their numbers again and again (using the new Arabic numerals and abacuses Merlin had introduced by way of the Royal College). The result was that no military operation in which Nimue Alban had ever been involved-including Operation Ark-had been more thoroughly planned out.

That doesn't guarantee the plans will work of course, he reflected. But at least if they don't, it won't be because there wasn't time to dot all the i's and cross all the t's!

Because of that, this particular set of meetings had been almost a formality, in many ways. But they'd been a useful formality, especially when it came to bringing Sharleyan fully up to speed. That, alone, would have made the trip thoroughly worthwhile in Merlin's opinion.

And I wish the Brethren would get off their collective . . . dime and decide we can bring her fully inside! Damn it, the woman's even smarter than I thought she was! We need her brains, and we need her insight, and we need them now, not four or five damn years from now!

No sign of his frustration was allowed to touch his expression, and he reminded himself-again-that Sharleyan had been Empress of Charis for less than a full month. It was hard to remember sometimes, given how completely she'd entered into the planning and projects Cayleb had already set into motion. Several of her suggestions, especially on the diplomatic front, had constituted major improvements, and Cayleb had discovered that she was probably the best sounding board he'd ever had. Which, of course, only increased his own frustration with the Brethren of Saint Zherneau's caution.

I'd say with their glacial caution, except that no one in Charis has ever actually seen a glacier, Merlin thought tartly, then gave himself a mental shake and returned his focus to Seamount.

"All of them' takes in a fair amount of ground, My Lord," he pointed out. "Could we possibly be a bit more specific?"

"Well, all right," Seamount said. "Do you want to discuss them here in the hallway, or would you care to step into my office?"

The walls of Seamount's office were, indeed, covered with fresh diagrams, Merlin observed. Several of them were quite interesting. It was obvious Seamount had been concentrating on ways to devise explosive shells for smoothbores, which made sense, given the number of smoothbore artillery pieces already in service. Not to mention the minor fact that there were no rifled artillery pieces in service anywhere in the world.

"The biggest problem with the explosive shot-I'm thinking about calling them 'shells,' since they're basically hollow shells filled with gunpowder-is getting them to explode when and where they're supposed to," the baron said.

"Yes?" Merlin encouraged in a neutral tone carefully selected to tease Seamount. The Charisian knew it, too, and his eyes gleamed.

"Well, there's this minor difficulty," he said. "Put most simply, it needs a fuse. One possibility, I suppose, would be to use a short-barreled weapon- something even shorter than a carronade, which could probably lob the shells the same way a catapult lobs stones. Anyway, something with a barrel short enough that one of the gunners could reach down it and light the fuse on the shell after it's loaded into the gun. Of course, I imagine most people would be a little unhappy standing around with a lit fuse on a shell inside a gun which might choose that particular moment to misfire." The baron shook his head. "Waiting for the explosion could be just a little hard on the nerves, I suspect."

"I can see that," Merlin agreed, manfully resisting the powerful temptation to smile.

"I'd gotten that far," Seamount continued more seriously, "when it occurred to me that there was no need to light the fuse by hand if I could use the gun's muzzle flash to do the same job, so I started trying to come up with a fuse which could be 'self-igniting' and give a reasonably reliable and consistent burn time. I've tried slow match and quick match, and I've tried other approaches, as well. The one that seems to work best, at least in tests, is a hollow wooden plug filled with fine-grained powder. We've finally managed to come up with a composition which actually burns at a predictable, reliable speed, and by using a fairly thin-walled plug, we can actually select for different burn times. We've discovered that if we mark the outside of the plug in increments and punch a hole through it so that the fuse's powder train ignites at a different point in the fuse channel, we can adjust the interval between firing and the shell's explosion with a surprising degree of accuracy."

In this case, Merlin knew, "we've" actually meant "I've," and he folded his arms as he allowed his own expression to match the Charisian's increased seriousness.

"I can see where that would have been difficult," he said. "From what you've already said, though, I suspect that isn't the real problem."

"No, it isn't," Seamount said with what Merlin recognized as massive restraint. "The problem, Seijin Merlin, is that it doesn't matter how reliably the fuse can be timed if the propelling charge keeps blowing the damned fuse into the shell and setting it off inside the gun!"

"Oh!" Merlin nodded, tugging on his mustache again. He frowned in obvious thought, although he wasn't thinking about exactly what Seamount might have thought he was. The difficulty lay less in solving Seamount's problem than in managing to avoid solving it too quickly.

"Let me see if I have this straight," he said, after several seconds. "You don't want the gunner to have to physically light the fuse on these 'shells' of yours for every shot, so you've developed one that the propelling charge's flash ignites. And from what you're saying, the fuse you've come up with lets you time things with a reasonably accurate reliability . . . when it works at all. But when the gunpowder behind the shell goes off, the fuse is a weak point in the shell wall and it goes off prematurely?"

"Basically, yes." Seamount shrugged. "For quite some time I wasn't certain whether the shell wall was fracturing around the fuse, or if the fuse itself was simply being blown bodily into the shell's interior. I suspected that it was the latter, but since no one's had any experience with this kind of projectile before, I couldn't rule out the possibility that the shells I'd designed simply had walls that were too thin to stand the shock of firing. There was no real way to tell from what was left after the shell exploded, so I tried firing a couple of hundred shells with solid plugs instead of fuses. The rate of premature detonations went down enormously, but they were still occurring, so I sat down and thought about it for while.

"Eventually, I realized that at least part of what was happening was that the gunpowder filling was moving inside the shell cavity when the round was fired, and the friction heat that generated was causing the premature detonations. So I tried stabilizing the charges by pouring in hot tar to hold everything in place. I had to be careful to preserve an open channel for the fuse's flash to reach the main charge, but that wasn't too difficult.

"After I started using the tar, we got no more premature detonations. . . as long as we stuck with the solid plugs, instead of using live fuses. That seemed like pretty conclusive evidence that the shell wall was strong enough, but I wanted to be sure. So, I filled several dozen shells with flour, instead of gunpowder, put live fuses into them, and fired them into shallow water where divers could recover them. When I examined them, it was obvious that the fuse itself-or enough of it to do the job, at any rate-was being blown into the shell, but that the walls weren't cracking under the stress of firing, which confirmed my suspicions about the cause."

He paused for a moment, his expression that of a man torn between satisfaction that at least a part of his design had proved workable and that he'd devised a technique for proving that it had, on the one hand, and frustration over his inability to fix the part of the design that hadn't proved workable, on the other hand.

"It doesn't happen every time, of course," he said then. "But it does happen a lot of the time, and getting gunners to adopt something this newfangled is going to be hard enough even if they're not afraid each shell is going to explode either inside the gun or the instant it clears the muzzle. It's just a little difficult for them to feel all warm and happy about something that's likely to kill them, you know."

"Well, yes, I can see that, I suppose." Merlin smiled slightly. Then he tugged on his mustache again, his smile turning into a frown as he pondered.

"Tell me," he said finally, "from what you've just said, it sounds as if you were loading the guns with the fuse hard up against the propelling charge."

Seamount nodded, and Merlin raised one eyebrow.

"Have you considered loading your 'shell' with the fuse facing away from the propelling charge, instead?"

"What?" Seamount frowned.

"I asked, if you'd-"

"Just a minute!" Seamount's raised hand stopped him, and the stubby commodore's eyes narrowed as he thought hard and furiously, indeed. Then he started nodding. Slowly at first, then faster and faster.

"Of course! I should have thought of that myself! The flash from the propelling charge sweeps all the way around the shell, doesn't it?"

"I'd certainly think so, at any rate," Merlin agreed.

"Of course it does! And if it sweeps around and lights the fuse in the front instead of hammering it into the shell cavity from the back. . . ."

Seamount stepped over to one of the slate-covered walls, snatched up a piece of chalk, and began jotting notes to himself. He read over them, shook his head impatiently, erased one line and chalked a correction, then nodded and looked back over his shoulder at Merlin.

"You're a very useful fellow to have over on a visit, Seijin Merlin," he said dryly. "Somehow, you always manage to point me in the right direction, don't you?"

"One tries," Merlin murmured.

"Oh, one certainly does," Seamount agreed.

"Was there anything else I might help you with, My Lord?" Merlin asked, sounding as little as if he were changing the subject as he could manage.

"Actually, there are two other problems I wanted your opinion on."

"Of course, My Lord."

"Both of them have to do with the new rifled guns," Seamount began. "I've tried several approaches to getting their rounds to take the rifling. One that seemed promising was to encase the projectile in a soft metal, like lead, that could be forced into the rifling much as we've done with the new rifle bullets. Unfortunately, the lead keeps stripping off and the rounds don't take the rifling consistently.

"One of my bright young assistants suggested that what we might do was to cut the cannon's bore like a helix, so that it was twisted itself. Not a round bore, you understand, but something a bit more trapezoidal that twisted around its own central axis to force the shot to spin without requiring rifling at all. Frankly, I think that would probably work, but I'm concerned about bore erosion. Which is why I'm still convinced that some form of grooved rifling is the answer; it's just a question of figuring out how to make the shot physically engage with the grooves.

"So far, the most promising thing I've tried is to cast the shot with metal studs." Chalk cracked like a staccato explosion as he tapped one of the diagrams on his wall. "As you can see, the idea is that when the gunners insert the shot into the muzzle, they engage the rifling with the studs. Then the shot rides down, rotating as it goes, until it comes to rest against the propelling charge. When it's fired, the studs ride back up the grooves, which imparts a rapid spin to the shot, and off it sails to its target."

He turned back from the wall to smile fiercely at Merlin, and Merlin smiled back.

"The problem is this," Seamount continued, his smile fading slightly. "First, as we'd expected from the beginning, bronze is too soft, especially using the stud-and-groove system. The insides of the barrels simply shred after only a very few rounds. Secondly, I've already discovered that even with the stud-and-groove approach, bore pressures are rising dangerously."

"What do you mean, 'even with the stud-and-groove approach'?"

"I expected bore pressure to go up drastically when I tried the lead coating system. After all, the shot was sealing the bore a lot more thoroughly, so it was inevitable the pressures would go up, the same way they went up in the rifles when we started using hollow-based bullets in them. But I'd rather hoped that enough of the propelling gases would be able to escape around the shot, which is smaller in diameter than the bore, using the stud system. Which, by the way," he added parenthetically, "is one reason I'm irritated with myself for not realizing those same gases could ignite the fuse on their way past the shell. Anyway, I'd hoped the windage between the shell body and the bore wall would let the gases escape and relieve the pressure."

"I can see that," Merlin acknowledged.

"Well, I suppose at least some of the gases are doing just that," Seamount told him. "Unfortunately, I don't think enough of them are. And there's another factor, too-one I hadn't really thought about initially. The shells we're developing for the existing smoothbores are the same size as the round shot they already fire, and because they're filled with gunpowder rather than solid iron, the shells are actually lighter than the shot the guns were originally proved for. But in a rifled gun, the shot doesn't have to be round. In fact, you don't want a spherical round. Since a more cylindrical shape lends itself more efficiently to rifling, anyway, you end up with an elongated projectile. For an explosive shell, that will give me a larger internal cavity, which means I'll be able to pack in more explosive, and the fact that it's hollow will tend to hold the weight down, at least to some extent. For a solid shot, though, the overall weight of the shot goes up very sharply, and even with a gunpowder filling, a properly designed shell strong enough to stand the shock of firing without disintegrating is going to have thick enough cavity walls for it to weigh more than a round shot for the same gun. And that greater weight means the gun has to work harder to throw shells at the same velocities at which it throws round shot, and that drives up bore pressure, too."

"All right," Merlin said, nodding to show he was following so far.

"We can cast iron guns and then cut the rifling grooves into them," Seamount said. "On the other hand, we've already got hundreds-thousands, actually-of the new bronze guns. I'm sure we could find something else to do with all of that bronze, but it seems an awful pity after we've gone to all the trouble of casting them in the first place to simply throw them away-as artillery pieces, I mean. That's one problem. The other problem, frankly, is that cast iron is a lot more brittle than bronze. I'm not sure it's going to be up to the stresses that are going to be exerted once we start casting large-caliber rifled guns. Not without going to truly enormous pieces-probably at least as big as or bigger than the old Great Doomwhale."

Which, Merlin reflected, had weighed almost six tons.

"But what would you use instead?" he asked aloud.

"At the moment, I'm thinking in terms of wrought iron," Seamount replied, not to Merlin's great surprise. "It'll be expensive-even more expensive than bronze-but Master Howsmyn says his ironmasters are equal to the task. I think he's probably right about that, but producing reliable wrought-iron gun tubes is going to be expensive in terms of manufacturing time, as well."

Merlin nodded again. He wasn't surprised by the difficulties Seamount had encountered. Indeed, if he was surprised at all, it was by how quickly the Charisian had experienced them. Which was foolish of him, he supposed. If Sir Ahlfryd Hyndryk had demonstrated anything, it was that his mind was every bit as quick and focused as Prince Nahrmahn's, if in very different directions.

The problem, as Seamount had just pointed out, was that cast iron was brittle. Safeholdian foundry techniques were remarkably advanced for a culture where steam power had been prohibited, yet they still weren't up to mass production of steel by a considerable distance. The technology itself lay within their grasp, but there were still obstacles to be overcome.