Safehold #04 - A Mighty Fortress by David Weber

Author:David Weber [Weber, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Adventure, Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Science Fiction - General, American Science Fiction And Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction And Fantasy, Fiction - Science Fiction, Space Warfare
ISBN: 9780765315052
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2010-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

.XVII.

Bruhstair & Sons Warehouse

and

The Temple,

City of Zion,

and

The Northern High Road,

The Temple Lands

The travel arrangements were going to be . . . unique.

The man who was currently Ahbraim Zhevons (and he was beginning to think he really needed a program listing the team’s entire roster to help him keep his identity straight on a moment- to- moment basis) had wondered exactly how Ahnzhelyk intended to transport a couple of dozen people, all of them fugitives from the Inquisition, out of what amounted to the Church of God Awaiting’s capital city, in the middle of winter, without seeing every one of them spotted, stopped, and arrested. In fact, however, he’d discovered, she didn’t intend to transport “a couple of dozen people” at all; she meant to move twice that many of them.

A bit more than that, actually. In fact, the exact total was fifty- seven.

He’d gawked at her when she first informed him of that minor point. Yet it had quickly become evident that he’d (yet again) underestimated the sheer scope of her operations, and this time around, he decided, he’d had even less of an excuse. It had been clear from the moment he first arrived in Zion that Ahnzhelyk was planning on leaving the city herself, not just smuggling out the families of a few highly placed churchmen. That being the case, it should have been equally evident to him that her plans would include the escape of any members of her own organization who might have been exposed (or to whom her own disappearance might have led the Inquisition), as well. He supposed that one reason it hadn’t occurred to him was the sheer scale of the thing. It must have required a massive dose of what had once been called chutzpah to even contemplate an evacuation (especially in a single effort) on the scale of the one Ahnzhelyk had in mind.

“You’re joking,” he said now, quietly, standing beside her in the icy, echoing emptiness of the ware house.

Ahnzhelyk had abandoned the expensive, beautifully tailored, exquisitely fashionable garments she’d worn for so many years. She’d also abandoned her long, elaborately coiffured hair, the elegant cosmetics, the jewelry, the flawlessly manicured hands. The smallish woman standing beside Zhevons, her breath steaming gently in the ware house’s cold, wore quilted trousers, sensible, sueded boots, and a thick but utilitarian and deplorably drab woolen sweater. She was slender, true, yet she radiated a sort of compact solidness sadly at odds with the fashionably languid, slightly fluttery, somehow ethereal Ahnzhelyk. At the moment, she also wore an unbuttoned coat that looked remarkably like one of the Imperial Charisian Navy’s winter- weather watch coats. The thing had to weigh as much as Merlin Athrawes’ cuirass, but it was undoubtedly impervious to anything as minor as a subzero blizzard.

“Joking?” Ahnzhelyk looked up at him and used one hand to smooth her now short- cropped hair. “Why should you think that, Ahbraim?”

“You’re telling me you actually managed to arrange all of this”—“Zhevons” waved his hands around the warehouse—“right under Clyntahn’s nose?”

“No, not really.

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