BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 19:
The emperor swung down from his saddle, accompanied by the sharp-eyed, handpicked Imperial Guard troopers of Merlin’s detachment. Those guardsmen were even more alert than usual, Cayleb noticed. None of them were oblivious to just how convenient certain parties would find it if something fatal were to overtake one Cayleb Ahrmahk.
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IN THE STORMY RED SKY – Snippet 67:
CHAPTER 19: St James Harbor, Bolton
“Captain,” said Vesey over the command channel, “this is Five. The transports will be landing at two minute intervals starting in seventeen minutes. I’ve assigned the ships berths in both the civilian and the naval portions of the harbor, but I can’t determine billets for the personnel until we have an inventory of how many barracks remain undamaged, over.”
IN THE STORMY RED SKY – snippet 66:
The Milton had reached the harbor moles. Daniel began to swing her cautiously, holding the cruiser at a steady five hundred-foot altitude. Even a corvette like the Princess Cecile was too big to fling around like an aircar.
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 18:
Some toys were more dangerous than others, however, and before the great nobles had awakened to their danger, the king and his handful of trusted advisers had created a genuine royal army, one which was both rather larger than the nobility had anticipated and answerable directly and solely to the Crown. And one which was independent of the feudal levies upon which previous monarchs had been forced to rely.
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IN THE STORMY RED SKY – snippet 65:
The Milton roared toward St James Harbor from the east with Daniel at the controls. He grinned even more widely as he fought the throttles: “roared” was very much the word for it, because every part of the big ship was making a thunderous racket.
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 17:
.III.
Parliament Hall,
City of Cherayth,
Kingdom of Chisholm
It’s a good thing Sharleyan warned me, Cayleb thought wryly as he and his mounted bodyguard arrived outside Parliament Hall.
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IN THE STORMY RED SKY – snippet 64:
CHAPTER 18: Above Bolton
The bow dorsal airlocks opened as Adele found the electronic keys to the substation at Bahnson Peak, on Bolton’s less-inhabited western continent. She wouldn’t have noticed that any more than she did the rest of the cruiser’s chaotic activities, except that Woetjans was bellowing, “Out out out, line up in the bloody corridor and count off now, you bloody turtles, now!”
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 16:
He paused and frowned for a moment, then shook his head.
“Actually, that’s not quite true,” he said. “It’s created problems with a lot of people, of course — I think we’ve probably got more ‘Temple Loyalists’ here in Chisholm than you have in Charis, for a lot of reasons — but for other people, it’s actually helped.” He looked back into Gyrard’s eyes once more. “Charisians aren’t the only ones who could see what was happening in Zion, you know.”
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 15:
.II.
Royal Dockyard
City of Cherayth,
Kingdom of Chisholm
“Thank you, Commander Ahzmynd,” Captain Andrai Gyrard said as the Chisholmian officer behind the desk signed off on the requisition order for replacement spars. Properly speaking, Gyrard ought to have left this interview to his purser. A full captain, the commanding officer of one of the Imperial Charisian Navy’s most powerful galleons, had far better things to do with his time than to spend it hobnobbing with dockyard officers just because he wanted a few spare spars before heading off to conduct an invasion. And if that was true of most galleon skippers, it was especially true of the man who commanded Emperor Cayleb’s flagship. Handling routine chores like this one so that their captains didn’t have to was precisely the reason the Navy had pursers in the first place.
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IN THE STORMY RED SKY – Snippet 63:
Daniel had left the bridge hatch open even though he expected the Milton to go into action shortly. There’d be plenty of time to seal the ship’s internal divisions, unless they were caught in the pulse of a mine; and if that happened, the internal divisions would vaporize along with the hull and its whole contents.
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