BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 32:
March, Year of God 893
.I.
Tellesberg Palace,
City of Tellesberg,
Kingdom of Charis
“I never imagined Admiral Rock Point was going to find this sort of evidence,” Sharleyan Ahrmahk said as she finished scanning the last page of the admiral’s report and laid it on the conference table in front of her.
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 31:
Prince Nahrmahn, Cayleb decided as he exchanged bows with Tohmas Symmyns, the Grand Duke of Zebediah, on Empress of Charis’ quarterdeck, had a pronounced gift for accurate thumbnail descriptions. If Zebediah could have been rendered down, his natural oil content could have lit every lamp in Tellesberg Palace for at least a year.
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 30:
The scorching sun was hot high overhead as Empress of Charis hove-to outside the breakwater of the city of Carmyn.
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 29:
.VI.
HMS Empress of Charis,
Hannah Bay,
Grand Duchy of Zebediah
Cayleb Ahrmahk stood on the quarterdeck of HMS Empress of Charis once again as the column of galleons wended its way past Grass Island. Shoal Island lay almost thirty miles to the north, and the broad waters of Grass Reach stretched before them. It was almost ninety miles yet to the harbor of the city of Carmyn, and he tried very hard not to feel closed in by the surrounding land.
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 28:
Clearly, Clyntahn didn’t want to do anything of the sort, and Trynair smiled thinly.
“I didn’t think you would.”
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 27:
“What do you mean?” Clyntahn demanded after a moment, and Trynair smiled sardonically.
Fool yourself if you want to, Zhaspahr, he thought, but don’t expect me to do the same thing. You know exactly what I mean.
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 26:
Clyntahn sat back down, tipped back his chair, and glowered sullenly.
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 25:
Clyntahn’s facial muscles tightened ever so slightly, but he declined to rise to Trynair’s verbal bait — if that was what it was — and simply nodded.
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 24:
.V.
Vicar Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s Office,
The Temple,
City of Zion
Vicar Zhaspahr Clyntahn, Grand Inquisitor of the Church of God Awaiting and Father General of the Order of Schueler, looked up from the paperwork on his desk, eyebrows knitting in anger, as the door to his sumptuous office in the Temple was opened abruptly. The upper-priest who had opened it so unceremoniously bobbed in a rushed bow, and Clyntahn’s eyes flashed dangerously. Father Dahnyld Fahrmyr had been one of his confidential secretaries for almost eight years. He knew better than to burst in upon his patron without so much as knocking first.
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BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 23:
At least there was no doubt in his mind — or in Merlin’s, for that matter — that Braynair’s espousal of the Church of Charis’ doctrines and denunciations of the Group of Four’s perversions of the Church were genuine and heartfelt. He might not be another Staynair, but he appeared to have his own dogged, unflinching internal strength. If he never struck the sparks of spontaneous love which Staynair evoked so effortlessly from his own flock, he would be there to the very end, shoulders hunched against the blast, facing any storm that came his way. And that, Cayleb told himself, was all that any emperor had a right to ask of any man.
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