Chasm of Fire

by Michael Wallace

  “How are we going to get inside?” he asked.

  “Is that what we’re up to, trying to see the actual fires?” Iliana said.

  Carbón shrugged. “How else are we going to figure out how it works?”

  “We’re years from that,” Thiego said. “Maybe decades. All we need to know is how to take the heat and spin it into . . . well, it’s not exactly like running a steam engine, but something along those lines.”

  “It’s not like steam at all,” Grosst said. “Though you can get power from steam, all the same.”

  “Could you explain for the uninitiated?” Carbón asked.

  The engineer opened her bag and removed two objects about the size of loaves of bread. They looked like miniature engines, in that there were some sort of rotors that could be turned, although Carbón couldn’t see how you would put in fuel or contain a fire.

  “I’ve got two different types of engines. They came from Basdeenian workshops—experimental workshops. More valuable than you could possibly guess. If the guild knew I was showing them to Quintanans . . .” Grosst gave a low whistle. “We’re not a cult like your Luminoso, but we have our secrets all the same.”

  “Which is half the reason we’re in this mess,” Carbón said. “Nobody trusts anyone else.” He nodded at the engines. “What do they burn, gas or coal?”

  Grosst gave him an enigmatic smile. “That’s what I’m telling you. They don’t use steam or heat at all—although they do get very hot if they draw excess power—but use something that is like lightning. We call these engines dynamos, and the power source is dynamic fire. You take heat, boil water, and then convert it into a dynamic form.”

  “Electricity,” Thiego said. The others turned toward him. “That’s what the Elders called it. Electrical current. Like water, only it flows as energy. The ancients took electricity from coal, from falling water, from the sunlight, from the wind. Hot lead fires.” He nodded toward the buildings to the south. “And in this case, a Calypso-class fusion reactor.”

  Grosst got excited. “Yes! That’s exactly what I was thinking. I have different cables here, two different kinds of dynamos to convert it, and the ability—I think—to draw small amounts of power from the artifact to test its promise.”

  She explained that engines such as this could be used for anything, could theoretically power the heaviest trains, if you managed to send enough dynamic fire into a big enough engine. And there was plenty of energy here for the taking. Even the ground was warm beneath them from all the waste heat being pumped deep into the mine shafts that must riddle the earth beneath the Rift.

  But how would you get it from here to where it was needed?

  Grosst had an answer for this. “Some kinds of dynamic energy will travel naturally for thousands of miles. Others lose their power in shorter distances.”

  “The Elders had ways of limiting the loss of electricity as it traveled,” Thiego said. “We might be able to figure that out, given enough time.”

  “That would change everything,” Grosst said. “But even now, this one furnace could power every mill and rail line for a hundred miles, maybe more.”

  “Machines to plow the ground,” Thiego said. “To plant the wheat and harvest it.”

  Grosst nodded. “Forges and metal stamps. Mechanical cranes and diggers.”

  Carbón was getting the spirit of it now. “To replace the mules in mines. Then replace the miners themselves. Cloth mills and manufactures of every kind.”

  “That would create a nightmare,” Iliana said. “You’d put the dumbre out of work and half the Thousand. People would starve, and then they’d riot and burn everything to the ground.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Thiego said. “There would be an abundance of everything. We would bring back a time of plenty. Like an army of slaves, all laboring to do our work for us, but machines that never sleep, never tire. All powered by the artifact.”

  “Sure, that easy,” Iliana said, sounding skeptical. “Everyone will be rich, just like that. More likely, it will flow to the people who already have money, and the dumbre will be more surly and resentful than ever.”

  “The Elders solved that problem,” Thiego said. “I don’t know how, but they did.”

  Iliana grunted. “Which is why the Third Plenty collapsed, I suppose, just like the First and Second before them. Because they’d solved all their problems.”

  “They didn’t solve all of them,” Grosst said. “But they obviously solved that one.”

  There wasn’t anything obvious about it, Carbón thought as he gave Iliana’s worries more consideration. There could easily be multiple factors. In any event, it seemed to him that they were in a bind already. An in-between space, neither in the Fourth Plenty, nor in the depths of the collapse.

  If they kept burning coal, continuing the way they were, then what they did have would eventually fizzle out and collapse anyway, only this time they’d have exhausted their ability to rebuild.

  Carbón asked Kessie to guide them around the buildings. The girl was wary of the artifact itself, but seemed confident that they’d already bypassed the traps that might waylay them. Thiego used his particle counter and said that the air was clear of the invisible poisons that had damaged the ground elsewhere in the Rift. In fact, the levels were so low that the artifact must have cleaned the riverbank as it built.

  Soon, they were walking in wonder among the buildings, gazing up at the perfectly formed structures. The ground surrounding the complex had been warmed by the heat seeping up from below, but it was much cooler in close, and not only from the shadow cast by the buildings. The towers themselves were chill to the touch, like a rock face on a frosty winter’s morning.

  The problem was that there were no doors anywhere. Neither was there a way to draw what the Basdeenian had called dynamic fire and the cabalist named electricity. Grosst had brought tools to access cables and draw off certain types of power, and Thiego had what he called insulators, which would keep the enormous energy of the Elders from entering their body and frying them to a crisp. But there seemed to be no way to get to it.

  “You must have some device, cabalist,” Grosst said.

  Thiego looked thoughtful for a long moment. “There is an artifact in the Sacred Vaults that pushes through solid walls, except . . . well, there’s that part about containment strength. Either the artifact stops us, or it lets us in and the whole thing burns out of control when we break through its protective barrier.”

  “Do we need the furnace itself?” Carbón suggested. “Could we draw heat from the ground or water?”

  “Water has to be boiling to generate enough steam to turn the dynamos,” Grosst said. “Or flowing under tremendous pressure. I’m not sure it’s quite that hot anywhere outside. I suppose we could investigate. But would it be worth it to run that little power on cables up out of the Rift? What we need is all the dynamic fire inside those buildings.”

  This was beyond Carbón’s understanding. “You hang cables? Like the kind you’ve been suspending from the base towers to the Great Span?”

  “Not exactly, no. I’ll show you.” Grosst leaned against her cane and removed one of the dynamos from her satchel. “The dynamic fire—what your cabalist calls a current—runs down a copper wire like this.” She pulled out what looked like a thin gray rope. “And you attach it here.”

  Iliana leaned in for a closer look. “That’s not copper.”

  “You wrap it in rubber to keep the dynamic fire from burning you. Otherwise, it’s like being struck by lightning. Like what Thiego was saying earlier.” Grosst gave a brisk shake of the head. “Forget that for now. The point is, I have somewhere to attach this side of the cord, but the other side needs access to the current, so . . .” She frowned. “Hold on, I . . .”

  The dynamo whirred to life with a sound like hummingbird wings. Grosst stared at it, mouth dropping, and looked back and forth from the engine to the cable, which had not been connected to the dynamo, and had no source o
f current anyway.

  “What’s it doing?” Thiego asked.

  “It’s running,” she said, wonder in her voice. “But it has no dynamic fire coming into it.”

  “It clearly does,” Carbón pointed out, “or it wouldn’t be humming like that.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Grosst said. “It needs a cable and a source of fire on the other side.”

  “Your engine is only drawing what is being sent to it,” Thiego said. “The wandering stars used to take energy from the void and send it on invisible beams to the earth.”

  “That must be it,” Grosst said. Her voice was full of wonder, and she turned the small engine over in her hands.

  Thiego nodded at the woman’s satchel. “What about the second engine—the one that takes the other kind of electrical current?”

  Grosst reached her hand inside. “No, it seems to be inactive. It’s only this dynamo. Guess that answers the question of which kind of dynamic fire your artifact produces, yeah?”

  Everyone but the scavenger girl was gathered around the device, which was whirring furiously and vibrating as the wheels spun inside, visible as a blur of motion through gaps in the surface. Iliana reached out and touched the object.

  “Is it supposed to be that warm?” she asked.

  “There’s always some excess heat,” Grosst said. She frowned. “Although it does feel hotter than I would have—ow!” She dropped the device, tried to break its fall with her foot, and winced as it struck the ground and rolled.

  The dynamo whirred faster and faster until the sound climbed to a high-pitched whine. There was a sharp smell like burning axle grease, followed by a puff of smoke. Carbón reached for his waterskin, thinking to douse the fire before the dynamo burned up, but Grosst grabbed his wrist and said he’d only destroy it that way.

  There was nothing to do but watch the Basdeenian engine grow hotter and hotter. The grass scorched around it, and the smoke increased, even while the whine turned high and frantic. Finally, there was a pop, and the dynamo burst into flames. Carbón turned to Grosst, expecting her to be devastated, spitting curses.

  Instead she was hopping on her good foot, dancing like a child. Her face was lit up, and she practically cackled in glee, then laughed when she took in all their expressions.

  “It’s fine! It’s all right. It’s better than all right.”

  “But your machine,” Iliana said.

  “Forget the dynamo. The dynamo can be replaced. But don’t you see? We can limit the amount of dynamic fire that enters any given engine. Insulate it against too much current, yeah? But there’s so much dynamic fire around here, and you can grab it right out of the air. I’ll capture it and send it out of the Rift. I’ll build new dynamos. I’ll build thousands of them. I’ll build dynamos as big as buildings. And then things will change in a hurry.”

  Carbón cast a glance to the steaming tower in front of them. His heart was pounding as he realized the implications. “Today is the dawn of the Fourth Plenty. Everything will change.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It took more than two hours from the time they left the ancient furnace for Kessie to lead them back across the valley floor to the safety of the cliffside, and they still had to scale the heights. By the time they arrived at the underside of the Great Span, Iliana’s calves were on fire from the climb, and the breeze whistling through the Rift chilled her sweat and made her shiver.

  There was still a good deal to accomplish, and so Iliana and Thiego shortly left the others and picked their way through the Thousand, which was bustling at the end of market day.

  “By the Elders, there are a lot of people in the streets,” she told him. “Where does all the money come from? Lord Carbón’s coffers are practically drained.”

  “Which is why,” Thiego said. “All that gold and silver is emptying from the Quinta and spreading elsewhere. But I’m sure it will find its way back to the top sooner or later.”

  “It always does,” she agreed.

  “I’ll imagine plenty of coin passes through your hands.”

  “None of it’s mine, though. And these days it drains out just as fast as I pick it up.”

  “Dip your hands in water, and they come out wet, at least.”

  “Sadly, no. In fact, my family almost got sent down last fall.” Iliana hesitated, wondering how much to admit, and decided to trust Thiego. “Carbón gave me just enough silver to keep my parents in the Forty, but if it weren’t for meals at His Grace’s estate, and clothing given to the household staff, I’d be as poor a dumbre.”

  Thiego gave her a cheeky grin. “There goes my plan to marry into wealth.”

  “Ha! Kessie has more money in her pocket right now than I do.”

  They’d paid the girl three escudos for guiding them into the Rift and sent her back to the lower terraces. Hopefully, the silver wouldn’t be stolen by a hard-drinking father or a mother who wagered too often on the dice.

  Carbón and Grosst had split off from Iliana and Thiego to climb to the Torre estate, where they’d hold a meeting with Pedro and Daniel. Their plan was to involve the Torres in negotiations with the Basdeenians to use Quintana’s furnace and Basdeen’s dynamos to carry dynamic fire—electricity, in Thiego’s parlance—out of the Rift. Once they’d settled matters among themselves, Carbón would bring the agreement to Mercado and win her over to the plan.

  It was similar to how they’d won her over after the fighting last fall. They’d made their plans on the side—the compromise between Mercado and de Armas over the size and funding of the army—and presented them to Mercado once the details had been worked out. For all her stubbornness, Mercado had proven herself reasonable when approached strategically. It would hopefully work a second time.

  But there was one additional problem. Naila Roja. Iliana and Thiego agreed that Naila would fight them every step of the way, more concerned with protecting and building her personal power than bringing about the Fourth Plenty.

  “There’s something you should know,” Thiego said as they pushed through the cloth vendors and their clients. “I don’t think Naila is or ever has been the Master of Whispers.”

  Iliana frowned. “How so?”

  “I never heard about her before that night of chaos. Nobody had. Naila showed up at the temple, declared herself the Master of Whispers, and ordered the Luminoso to rally around her. And we did. Salvatore was dead—there were no other leaders stepping forward.”

  “I remember that. And you think it was a lie?”

  “I think she was jumping on an opportunity, nothing more.”

  “But if she was lying, why didn’t the real Master of Whispers appear?” Iliana asked.

  “Maybe he died, too. Naila must have known him, must have seen him fall during the fighting. And when Salvatore was burned alive, she gambled that there was nobody to contradict her. The Master of Whispers was always a shadowy figure—few people must have known his identity.”

  “If you had doubts, why didn’t you say something? By the Elders, you had to have known she was a wretched person. Why let her take power?”

  “I didn’t know she was all that terrible, to be honest. Remember, I was only brought up from the dumbre a few years ago. After that, I kept my head down learning geometer lore. Then, when Naila offered me the position of Master of Secrets—I don’t know, I was flattered, scared. Worried I wouldn’t be able to live up to it. I wasn’t thinking hard enough about what everything meant until Naila was entrenched. By then, it was too late.”

  Iliana thought he was excusing himself too easily. “You should have thought about it. Thought good and hard.”

  “I know that now.”

  “Naila was mixed up in that business with the attack on the watch, and probably had something to do with my brother’s murder, too. If she didn’t do it herself, she certainly was aware of it.”

  “Believe me, I know that now. Naila is a dangerous person. I understand.”

  “Do you, though? The full extent of it, I
mean? Did you know Pedro Torre discovered two of his uncle’s missing servants buried in planters on the estate, apparently murdered? What do you bet they died the same day as Lord Torre?”

  “Yes, I heard. And I heard that Daniel Torre declined to investigate further.”

  “Why should he?” she said bitterly. “It was only his father who was killed. And the mother of his children who most likely did the killing. But I suppose he’s a rich man now, while his cousin runs the family affairs.”

  They arrived at the plaza in front of the temple. It was crowded with people going to and from the markets, but also with several cabalists milling about on the temple steps, engaged in a heated discussion among themselves. Thiego stopped Iliana at the edge of the square, a concerned expression on his face.

  “Let’s study this situation before we go blazing in.”

  He gave the brass ring on his finger a turn. Everything in the square seemed suddenly brighter, in spite of the dying daylight, and she wondered if they had dimmed in turn.

  Iliana eyed him. “When did you first suspect she was lying?”

  “I was suspicious from the first. But, I figured most likely I was being paranoid. It was only later, as she bustled about the temple, always trying to get her hands on new artifacts, recruiting new cabalists and turning others from their legitimate purposes, that I allowed my doubts to grow.

  “Why, if Naila was the Master of Whispers all along, did it seem like she was learning everything fresh, just like I was? Why had she always answered to Salvatore, instead of the other way around? Why didn’t she know all the hidden cabalists already? Why did she need to flush them out?”

  Iliana thought about the night when the witherers were out, when Naila had tried to recruit her for the Luminoso. That was in the days before the artifact burned its way clear of the mine. Naila had already been building a power base then, already gathering acolytes. So clearly she’d had power and ambition already.

  “Nothing you’ve told me rules it out entirely,” she said. “What if Naila really is the Master of Whispers, but only took her position shortly before the fight? Salvatore could have appointed her when the former person was killed or deposed. So Naila acted new because she was new—she’d still be legitimate.”