* * *
"Unbelievable." Omis put down his hammer and wiped his forehead. "You'll make the model anyway?"
"Of course." Sulun sat down on the nearest pile of iron billets and laced his shaky fingers together. "Yanados is carving the ship model right now, and Arizun's measuring out the drawings for the engine parts. We'll simply have to hide what we're doing, and make the usual excuses."
Ziya threw him an unfathomable look, but said nothing.
"Just how complex is the improved design?" Doshi asked.
"With the perpetual feeding assembly, it looks like a hoo-raw's nest," Sulun groaned. "I don't blame him for being perplexed by the drawing, but to think we can proceed without a model for testing . . . How can the man be such a fool? Is he mad?"
"He's probably never dealt with any sort of engine work before." Omis picked up another billet with the long tongs, and shoved it into the glowing heart of the forge. "He's used to haggling and debt collecting with tradesmen and creditors. It never entered his thoughts that metals are less pliable than men; they have no ears to hear threats or promises, no greed to entice, no minds to change. Therefore, smithing can't be hurried, nor engine crafting either."
"Metals have more honor than men," Ziya murmured, dumping more wood into the furnace.
Sulun hadn't the heart to even try answering.
"Enough wood, Ziya," Omis mercifully cut in. "Come here and tend the bellows awhile. That's a good lad. Doshi, put your gloves on and hold these tongs."
Sulun pulled himself to his feet and shambled off to his drawings. Best give Arizun some help finishing them. Time, time, not enough time: two projects to finish, one of them secret and one half secret, and all of Sabis was running out of time.
* * *
The bad news came to Sabis with a blare of trumpets in the early morning, a knot of troopers bringing back wagonloads of wounded at the north gate, and a horde of desperate refugees behind them. By noon the word was everywhere: the north had fallen. The riverhead lands were lost, including the last of Jarrya, and where would grain, wool, and mutton come from now? Prices jumped and bucked and jumped again like colts feeling the saddle for the first time.
At noon Arizun ran into the courtyard of Entori's house with a minimal bundle of purchases, a blanched face, and an earful of news. All the others clustered around him to hear it, repeat it, demand details. Yes, the north was gone. No, nobody knew when the Ancar would come down the river valley toward the city. Yes, there were refugees, many now and more coming, all of them desperately poor. Yes, there was talk of another draft in the city to raise troops for the fighting northward. No, nothing had been heard of the northern army except that it was in retreat. Yes, the docks were crowded with panicked Sabisans buying passage across the straits to Esha. No, he had no idea how this would affect Entori's business interests. . . .
It was Vari, looking back to keep track of the baby, who noticed that Sulun wasn't part of the goggling crowd. He was still sitting on the bench were they'd left him, ignoring his half-eaten bread and cheese, looking up at the sky as if hunting for omens. He looked not at all surprised. Vari watched, thought, then paced closer.
"You knew," she said quietly, "You knew it would happen. "That's why you've been so strange and furious these past few days. How did you know?"
"From Zeren." Sulun dropped his glance back to the food in his hands, but didn't eat. "He guessed. He told me. We must complete the bombard soon, very soon, or there'll be no city to defend with it. Do you understand?"
Vari nodded, staring at him, then bit her lip and went quietly away to talk to Omis.
* * *
Dinner was tense and strange. The master didn't appear, and Eloti put in only a brief appearance. The number at the servants' table seemed smaller too, though it took Sulun a while to realize who was missing.
"Where," he asked the housekeeper, "have our three great watchmen gone?"
There was a moment's silence, and then everyone stated talking at once.
"They've run off, haven't you heard?" said the scullery maid. "What with all the refugees, the big houses fear thieves. There've been criers in the streets asking for trained house guards to come work up the hill, offering much better terms than the old vulture here does. That's where our three louts have gone, I can tell you."
"'Tis the end of the world," the housekeeper gloomed. "The barbarians could come any day, breach the walls, rape and slaughter us in our beds."
"You've small need to fear that," the porter muttered.
"My spells will protect us," the house wizard mumbled into his cup.
"We'll starve first," the cook grumbled. "No food from the northlands, and there'll be less and less from the river valley as the Ancar come south. Nowhere to buy but from Esha across the water, and their prices are terrible."
"They can hardly feed their own people and us too," Arizun noted. "Best to cross the water, I think, and not stop in Mez, but keep on going."
That started everyone talking about flight, gathering up one's hoarded coppers and taking passage on the next boat. Sulun's party looked at each other and huddled closer, thinking much along the same lines. Sulun shook his head, disgusted at their naivete.
"Do you think you'll be welcome in Esha?" he commented, mostly to his own people but loudly enough that the rest could hear him. "They've too many refugees already, and most of them starving. In Mez, I'll wager, you can find beggars in the streets and slaves on the block who were once rich folk here in Sabis. Go down the coast to Tari, and you might find the rich folk keeping out of the gutter—but what about poor folk like us? Hah! You'd have to run further than that. And how far will your copper bits take you? You'd do better to go inland, work for the farmers and herdsmen if they'll have you. Or go all the way to the towns at the Bay of Naydres—if you can speak the language, or learn it quickly. You might keep from starving thereby, but don't expect to ever be richer than you are in this house, right now."
He drained his cup and waited, wondering what the reaction would be.
After a moment's silence, the servants went back to discussing passage to Mez. As far as Sulun could tell, the only effect of his words was that some of the servants seriously considered how they would make a living in Esha, a land they'd never seen and knew little about.
Sulun pushed his plate aside, got up, and went out. After a moment's hesitation, the apprentices and Omis and family rose and followed him.
They clustered in Sulun's room, even the children, crowding it unbearably though no one complained. Omis asked first where they could realistically plan to go, if not Mez.
"Could we get as far as Tari?" Arizun asked, guessing that none of them could afford passage to the Naydres Bay cities.
"I doubt it," Doshi answered, consulting a scribbled wax board. "I'm guessing that anyone in the south with so much as a donkey wagon to rent will be charging top prices, with so many refugees on the roads. There are, what, ten of us? Never. Perhaps we should go inland, find a farming town that needs us and our, uh, wares . . ." He shrugged, guessing as well as any of them that their particular wares commanded a poor market.
"Back to where we began when Shibari's house burned," Omis groaned. "At least now we have our tools, but I'd need a wagon to carry my anvil."
"If you had the anvil, and the rest," Sulun pondered, "could you build another forge?"
"I could, but it would take a good moon and a half—besides paying some potter to fire the bricks. Have we the money for that?"
"If we could reach Sakar, our trade would be welcomed," Yanados put in.
"The problem is reaching Sakar," Arizun pointed out. "We haven't the money to hire a ship."
"South," Vari pronounced. "It's all we can reach. How we'd live after . . . Who knows the most about the southlands?"
Everyone looked at Arizun, who only shrugged. "Why ask me? I was only a baby when we left there. All I know is that my mother had reason to leave."
"Zeren," Sulun murmured, drawing their attention
back. "Zeren fought there. He'd know."
"Well, by all the gods, ask him!" Omis snorted. "Ask him tomorrow."
"We will." Sulun straightened up, rubbing kinks out of his back. "Arizun, tomorrow take Yanados and some stout sticks in case of trouble, and carry a letter to Zeren's house. Meanwhile . . ." He looked at Omis. "How soon can we start moving our necessities to the riverside shop?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Zeren pondered the question long and hard, letting his gaze wander over the cracks in the ceiling. He looked, Sulun noted, worse than last time. "Nowhere in the south," he finally said. "Nowhere you could reach. Neither could you get safe passage to any of the isles. It's hopeless."
"There must be somewhere!" Sulun insisted. "And no, before you ask, I've not lost hope for the bombard. Given time, I can make it work. If not given time, I ask you, where can I take us to be safe?"
"Us?" Zeren looked at the little gathering clustered in his dining room. "You've never considered going your separate ways?"
"No," said Omis, Sulun, and Vari together.
Vari added, "How would we take care of the children?'
"So it comes to that." Zeren looked at all of them for a long moment. "You may be right, you know. As a family, most especially a family of tradesmen, you could live better than any single man alone—if you could once find a place beyond the reach of the war."
"Where?" Sulun insisted. "Name a place."
Zeren leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. "Behind the lines," he answered. "Could you once get past the army of the Ancar, find a place where they've long since passed, you'd be left alone. Doshi—"
The youth flinched, sat up. "Yes?"
"You know the northlands. Behind the Ancars' lines, what's the land like? What sort of folk live there?'
"Farmers, as I remember." Doshi scratched his arm nervously, unused to being asked for advice. "There were villages, small villas, all over that land before the invaders came. I don't know what's there now."
"I doubt that the Ancar destroyed every village they found," Zeren considered, "or that they found all of them. There's my advice, friends, for whatever good it may do. Go become the blacksmiths and brass smiths of some town behind the Ancars' march—and the further behind, the better. Go up beyond the Gol, if you can, and if you can abide the northern winters. Ah, hell, if Sabis falls, I might even come with you." He poured himself some more wine, seeming in a much better humor.
The others looked at each other, wondering if that was a joke.
* * *
Yanados paced back and forth along the worktable, studying the engine model as Sulun assembled it, frowning and muttering to herself until Sulun couldn't ignore her anymore.
"Did you have some complaint?" he asked, setting his tools aside.
"I was thinking . . ." Yanados shuffled from foot to foot. "If such a ship were to meet with pirates, well . . . pirates hire magicians too, you know, to ill-wish their victims."
Sulun shrugged. That made sense, but he couldn't see the relevance.
"Sulun, if a full-sized engine of this sort were ill-wished, what could it do wrong?"
"I don't know," Sulun admitted, peering at his model. "The valves might fail, perhaps. We'll have to make them strong. . . ."
"What else?" Yanados tapped a finger against the tiny boiler tube set over its miniature brazier. "Fire and water, and the fierce pressure-power of steam. Could it . . . explode?"
Sulun dutifully thought about that, thought of the water poured down the funnel, through the trapdoor valve, into the heated brass tube above the brazier, then through the hollowed—and moving—ball-and-socket joint, then into the spinning chamber. What weakness? Where?
The heating tube? Too little water, too little steam, and the -jetted chamber wouldn't spin. Too much water would cool the tube, make too little steam, and again the chamber wouldn't spin. Fill the brazier too scantily and you'd have not enough heat; again, no steam, no spinning. Fill it too full, let the flames or even the coals overlap the tube . . .
"The tube might soften, melt, warp," he admitted, "but that would require so much heat, so much wood—"
"Believe me, if it can be done wrong, some fool sailor will do it. It will not be Natural Philosophers who use this engine at sea."
"True, true . . ." Sulun studied the assembly for a long moment, then abruptly smiled. There was indeed one simple way to keep some fool of a sailor from overloading the brazier. He reached for the metal snips.
"What are you doing with the brazier?" Yanados asked, peeping over his shoulder.
"Making it smaller and shorter," Sulun smiled, plying the heavy shears.
Snip, snip, snip—and the brazier's legs were shortened. Snap, snap, snap—and the bowl of the brazier lost its original rim. Sulun carefully tucked the little model back to its place in the assembly. He scratched some notes on a nearby tablet.
"What would that do?" Yanados asked.
"Small brazier, small fire," Sulun explained. "Load the brazier full as you can, the coals still won't reach the tube and melt it. Hmmm, it wouldn't hurt to make the tube thicker, too. . . ." He scribbled more notes.
"Just be certain no fool can work it wrong," said Yanados, padding toward the door.
Not until after she was gone did Sulun think to wonder how she knew so much about the habits and failings of sailors.
* * *
The moon wore away her horns, and nothing improved. Morning reports with Entori grew ever more difficult and unpredictable; his shipping interests did marvelously well on the short Sabis-Mez run, carrying refugees south and food north, but elsewhere on the Inland Sea the trade was dangerous and the old man's temper likewise. Always he exhorted Sulun to hurry with the engine.
At least, Sulun told himself after leaving the master's study in a shower of abuse, the engine model was finished. It worked after a fashion; the tiny valves clearly weren't very efficient, but the rotating platform and gears managed well enough. No sense putting it off; he should begin making the full-sized engine for Entori's ship, as he'd promised.
That meant that Omis would have to put aside work on the bombard to cast and shape the brass fittings for the engine.
"Ah, well," Sulun consoled himself as he entered the courtyard, "It shouldn't take more than a day or two. . . ."
He noticed, as he walked past the end of the morning-report line, that one of the maids was missing.
"Ran away," snorted the housekeeper, when asked. "That lazy slut must have had a better offer from some uphill house. Didn't leave word, either; just out the door and gone."
"Went out shopping yesterday," the porter said, "and never came back."
Sulun left them arguing and went off to see Omis, but the permanent unease in the back of his mind grew another degree thicker. It would be wise, he decided, to start moving as much gear as possible to the river workshop. Starting today.
* * *
"The heat's awful," Doshi grumbled, slapping the reins irritably across the lagging mules' rumps. "Only fools go hauling loads about at noon."
"Only fools go out without guards at any other time," Arizun snapped, casting a quick look around the almost empty street. "You haven't seen much of the city since the bad times came, have you?"
"Oh, I know there are more thieves and beggars about, but good gods, there are three of us. And we're armed." Doshi tapped his toes on the hatchet hidden under the carts seat. "And we're not on foot. No need for this."
"Wagoners have been robbed before, and you should keep that closer to hand." Arizun tapped the bulge at his belt under his light cloak. "And three of us wouldn't be enough against a good-sized gang."
"Keep your voices soft," Yanados warned from her perch at the back of the cart. "Don't draw any more attention than we must."
"You've both gone mad with suspicion," Doshi scoffed, in a near whisper. "That or gone silly for the ungodly fun of carrying weapons about. I swear, you're turning barbarous yourselves. Nobody goes armed un
less they're looking for trouble—"
"Or expecting it to look for them," Arizun growled. "Keep your eyes on the street, fool."
"Be careful who you call a fool," Doshi muttered, steering the mule team around a corner. "You haven't read half the books—now, what's this mess?"
Several buildings down, the street was half blocked with a tumble of broken furniture and assorted garbage. A man on foot could have passed it, but the mule cart would have considerable trouble.
Arizun saw it, gasped, seized the reins from Doshi, and yanked the mules to a hoof-clattering halt. "Back up!" he hissed. "Back the way we came, fast!"
"What—"
"Damnation!" Yanados yelled, making them both turn and look, as she yanked her hatchet free.
Behind them, perhaps half a dozen ragged bravos—some of them quite young, a few older men—slid out of the doorways to block the street. They carried assorted bludgeons and short knives. They stalked toward the halted cart, smiling grimly, not even bothering to give the traditional stand-and-deliver challenge.
"Back up!" Arizun repeated, shoving the reins at Doshi. Then he scrambled into the back of the cart and fumbled at something under the sacks.
Yanados hissed through her teeth, crouched at the cart's tail, and swung her hatchet in a slow, warning arc. The approaching gang slowed and spread out, still smiling.
Doshi might have argued about backing into a fight, but just then his eye caught motion near the trash pile ahead. Three more club-wielding boys were slinking out of cover, coming toward the mules. Doshi gulped; wasted a precious second fumbling for the hatchet under the seat, and began hauling furiously on the mules' reins. The mules, finally understanding that there was danger ahead, squealed and backed. The toughs ahead moved faster, starting to run.
The six thugs behind the cart stopped where they were, crouched, waiting for the prey to come to them, waited to jump for the tailgate.
Yanados reached out and swung at the nearest, making him hop backward. He recovered and tried to lunge in under her arm, but she caught him backhand on the return stroke. The back of the hatchet head thwacked meanly against his head, dropping him to the ground with a shocked yell and a sudden spurt of bright blood.
A Dirge for Sabis Page 10