The Iron Ship

by K. M. McKinley

  “You do not require my leave to go from your own breakfast room, husband,” she said. She did not lift her eyes from the newspaper. The front pages carried a large headline on the High Legate’s worsening sickness and the political manoeuvrings it had engendered. Trassan’s ship also merited many column inches. It had done ever since Vand had announced the discovery of his frozen city.

  To these she paid cursory attention, however. She was a curious one, poring over the business notices for an hour or more every day. He attempted to break the ice, one last time.

  “Would you prefer some lighter reading matter, wife?”

  “No, goodfellow, I am content,” she said. A forkful of kedgeree hovered by her mouth as she scrutinised stock movements. Some fell onto her paper. She did not notice.

  “Goodlady... I... Let me.” He said. He came to her side and scooped up the mess with a napkin, careful not to stand too close to her. He moved awkwardly around her to prevent their touching. She glanced up at him.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He blushed. Closeness to her brought up a potent mix of emotion. The memory of their first night together embarrassed him. He had never expected her to fall willingly into his arms, but it had been so cold he had not attempted to share her bed since.

  He made to go. She stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “You are timid around me. Why?” Her tone was unrevealing. Was she angry, challenging him? He could not tell.

  “I am not a monster, Katriona,” he said. “I have never been much use at anything other than cards. And then not all the time. This marriage was of our mutual choice, but I am aware that your heart will always belong to Arvane. I... Perhaps I was a fool to hope otherwise. I will try to be a good husband to you. Gods know I’ve not been much good at anything else. I refuse to force myself on you.” Although, that was what he had done; it certainly felt that way. This was not how he hoped things would turn out.

  She looked into his eyes searchingly. He could not tell if she found what she was looking for. He blinked stupidly.

  “I shall make a proposal to you, Demion Morthrock. Let us try to get on. Let us try to make this marriage work.” She brushed a grain of rice that Demion had missed from her paper. “Gods also know that I have seen enough misery in marriage. I refuse to be a miserable wife. I acquiesced to your request for my hand because you have a gentle reputation. I have shared your bed.”Not very enthusiastically, he thought dejectedly. “Do you not think we should be friends?”

  “Well, I, well, yes. Yes, I suppose we could be friends. We should be friends!” His heart quickened.

  “And friends, especially husband and wife, should share in all things. Is that not what the vows we took said?”

  “I suppose so...”

  She smiled brightly at him. “Excellent. Then tomorrow you may show me the mill.”

  The request threw him. “I... I’m sorry?” he stuttered. The napkin, stained with news ink and kedgeree, dangled from his hand.

  “We are married, whether we want to be or not. We might as well enjoy it. Let us be friends. Let us share everything. You are supposed to be a man of business, a short trip for a happy wife. Show me our family industry.”

  “Well,” he said. “Well.” It was all he could think to say. “Well.” He was such a fool!

  “You do agree, do you not?”

  There was nothing he could think of that made a reasonable argument as to why he should not show her the mill. She was his wife now, she shared his name. Why then did he feel as if he stood upon a precipice?

  “It is a dreadfully noisy place,” he said doubtfully.

  “I’ll survive. Surely you cannot hope to have missed that I find such things interesting? Why not tomorrow at half of the sixth bell, the workers will be already at their tasks. I would not wish to get in their way.”

  “Yes. Yes, half of sixth. Very good.” He nodded, even as he questioned what the hell he was doing.

  She returned to her paper. He had to remind himself he did not have to wait to be dismissed before he bumbled his way out of the room.

  THE MORTHROCK MILL was in Karaddua. The name evoked a rural idyll, but the village it had once belonged to had been buried by row upon row of miserable grey houses. The city continued for a mile beyond Karaddua before the tattered fringe of the countryside began to break up the factories and slums.

  The Morthrocks’ carriage clattered down a wide road of setts made uneven by subsidence. Six black dogs pulled it, fine drays. They wheezed in the unhealthy, chemical reek clinging to the district. Towering chimneys punctuated the rule-straight sentences of housing. Long banners of black, glimmer-tainted smoke streamed from the top of each. The sky around the horizon was clear, but Karaddua was lidded with a brown roil that crept lower to the ground with every passing moment, shutting out the blue.

  A tram rattled past, bell ringing and dogs barking. Morthrocks’ team yipped in greeting. Katriona looked out on women labouring at their stoops and windows with scrubbing brushes. Their cleaning never ceased. One threw a bucket of grey water not quite in their path, and fixed the carriage with a hard eye. A small girl in a filthy dress and bare feet stood on a street corner. She held a hoop in her hand, but did not play with it. Their carriage, gleaming when it came out from the coachhouse, had accrued a layer of grime. Katriona looked through a haze of dirt.

  “It is abominably filthy here,” she said.

  Morthrock nodded. “Our family’s business is a dirty one.”

  “And all these people live among the muck.”

  “They come from far and wide for employment, my dear. It is necessary that they dwell close by their place of work. There is a living for them here that there is not in the countryside.”

  “It seems inhumane.”

  Demion banged on the carriage roof with his cane. He was surprised at his irritation with Katriona’s reaction. Rationally thinking, it was better this way. If she were shocked she would leave well alone and get on with being the good wife, and he was rather hoping for that outcome. But he found himself affronted. He realised that he wished her to be proud of his family’s enterprise, even though it had never interested him, and had left its running to others since he had inherited it.

  “My father provided doctors, and schools for every child until the age of seven, employment for life thereafter, all benefits they still enjoy. These people are fortunate. They have the opportunity for advancement. They could be beholden to some old money lord and dwelling in a shack. Instead they have freedom here.”

  Katriona looked again at the ranks of houses. Filth trickled along gutters.

  “This is a poor form of freedom.”

  “This district will soon be linked to the sewers. The embankments on the Lemio and the Var are in place. There is no flooding in the lower reaches any more.” He pointed to a lamp. “There is glimmer lighting, put in only this last year. I admit the people could have better lives, but every year brings new advances, new benefits. It will not always be this way. Industry enriches us all. Here is the opportunity to make something of oneself, if one but has the mettle.”

  “My father says the same thing,” said Katriona. “I never believed it.”

  “My father did a lot for them.” He awkwardly patted Katriona’s hand. He felt even more awkward when she did not withdraw it, but instead grasped his hand tightly.

  “And what have you done for them, my dear Demion?” she said.

  He wanted to retort, perhaps sharply. He wanted to ask what her father had done for anyone, growing rich as he had from factories and mills such as his. But he could not. He had always found it hard to speak whenever Katriona locked eyes with him. He had assumed this inability would leave him once she was his. If anything, it was worse.

  “Ah, well. Yes.” The carriage slowed, saving him. “Aha! Here we are!”

  A tall wall topped with a fence of spiked, cast iron wheels bounded the mill. Four sets of double gates pierced it, each decorated with moulded brick re
liefs depicting scenes from pre-Iapetan mythology. All were open. Large wagons went in and out of two. A tramway came out of the third. The driver called out his commands to his team. The dogs barked and turned sharp left into the fourth gate.

  They passed under the archway, and into the Morthrocksey Mill.

  THE MILL ENCOMPASSED several blocks, a town in its own right clustered around the Morthrocksey stream. A wide main street divided it into two. On either side of the gate end were tall, modern buildings with large windows. In these were situated the mill offices and most delicate, recent machinery. At the far end, some five hundred yards away, were the foundries. From one of the three came a ceaseless stream of smoke, shot through with orange sparks, the others were cold. Down the left hand of the street ran the Morthrocksey. The river had been imprisoned in a straight channel of smoothly coursed masonry. For much of its length down to the Var it had been culverted. The plans were that it would be incorporated into the sewer system, but for the moment this brief stretch emerged still into daylight. What water that had not been sucked up by the factories was bright orange, a stinking trickle that ran through miniature rapids of rubbish. Where the refuse grew thick it dammed the oily flow, rainbow patterns on the surface there, crowned with extravagant mounds of dirty yellow foam rimed with brown scum. The smell of it was intolerably potent.

  Katriona held her handkerchief up to her nose as Demion opened the door and stepped out.

  “I told you this was no place for a lady,” said Demion with a mixture of admonishment and sympathy. He held out his hand to help her alight from the carriage nonetheless. “We’ll start with the production floor first. This way.”

  Three Tyn came out to handle the dogs, their iron collars hidden under scarfs whose bright colours were undimmed by the dirt that caked them everywhere else. Child-sized and vulnerable by the drays, they crooned into the dogs’ ears. The dogs shut their eyes and lightly licked at the Tyn. The Tyn moved around the whole team, checking their feet and harnesses.

  Demion waved at them. “Fine dogs, aren’t they?” he said cheerfully.

  The Tyn watched him with diamond eyes. One spoke. “Very fine they are, master, yes, very good. Very good. But...”

  Another Tyn shushed him. They shared hard looks.

  Demion sighed. “They are always doing that. They have their ways. Katriona, no! Leave them...”

  Katriona shook off his hand and approached the Tyn. They came no higher than her chest. They appeared sexless, near identical, with long noses and shocks of grey, coarse hair. One, from its skirt and headscarf, appeared to be female.

  “No, please. What would you tell us?”

  The female Tyn curtseyed. The one holding the dog’s head looked to the floor, evidently nervous. “Begging your pardon, goodlady,” she said; her voice was surprisingly deep. “We don’t mean to tell you your business.”

  “Why?”

  “Tall kado don’t like it much when we’re telling them their business,” said the one holding the lead dog. At close quarters, his relative youth to the others was apparent. His face was less wrinkled, there remained black in his hair. His utterance earned him a kick from the other male. All wore hobnailed clogs, so it must have hurt, but the younger male made no sound.

  “We don’t mean to be forward,” said the older one hurriedly.

  “I do not care if you are. What would you tell me?”

  The Tyn looked at each other. The young one spoke hesitantly. “Begging your pardon, goodlady, but the left wheel dog has a problem with his leg.”

  “Lokon, did you know this?”

  The lead dog shook his head. He had a little Sorskian blood in him, but though he understood human words well enough he could not talk.

  “Well then,” said Katriona. “What is your name?”

  “Tyn Jumael,” said the younger Tyn.

  “You are the groom?”

  “Stableboy, goodlady.”

  “Perhaps you could see to it for me then?” She fished in her clutch bag for a purse, and pulled out a copper bit. “For your trouble.”

  The Tyn looked at it, and then at her.

  “Take it, please.”

  “Thanking you, goodlady,” said the Tyn. He practically snatched it from her. She smiled. “I will see to it for you.” The female Tyn scowled distrustfully, and went to oversee the uncoupling of the dog team from the carriage.

  “What was all that about?” asked Demion as she rejoined him.

  “There is a problem with one of the dogs.”

  He nodded. “Ah. They have a way with animals, as with many other things.”

  “There are many Tyn at the Morthrocksey mill?” Katriona watched them in fascination.

  “A hundred or so. You like our little workers?” said Demion approvingly. “They labour hard and are honest, leaving aside their abilities, which are formidable.”

  Katriona and Demion stopped to allow a two-storey goods wagon to rumble past. Fourteen huge dogs strained in their harnesses. They were unmatched, mongrels, picked for size and strength.

  “Why do they work here?” she asked. “In the stories they are frolicking in the woods.”

  “The wrong kind of Tyn,” said Demion. “These are not of that sort.”

  “That does not answer my question, husband.”

  “Oh, you know, they have nowhere else to go, I suppose.”

  “Have you ever asked them?”

  Demion looked uncomfortable. “They are a secretive people. They are bound to the place. They’ve lived here for, well, forever, I suppose.”

  He led her over a bridge, and to a side door of the building. There a man in a formal suit waited, much thinner and a little younger than Demion, but the family resemblance was noticeable. He was accompanied by a female Tyn, her sex apparent only by her garb, although in her case her clothes were vibrant in the extreme, She wore layered skirts, three scarves, and a large, lopsided hat atop a headscarf that hid her wild hair, a style currently favoured by lower-class women. Her arms were hung from wrist to elbow with copper bracelets, many with numerous charms depending from them. Three mismatched necklaces sat on top of her scarves. The clothes were all heavily patterned, and to human eyes the colours and designs clashed unpleasantly.

  They were antitheses of each other this pair, she short and broad, he tall and thin. Drab to colourful. Male to female. Human to Tyn. She was solid, he wan, his hair lank under his foundry-master’s hat. Both dipped their heads in deference to Demion as he approached them, but the man did so with a hangdog expression, a weary expectance of hard work that would not end. The Tyn projected pride and curiosity.

  “This is my cousin, Holdean Morthrock,” said Demion. “He er, well, he runs things here on a day-to-day basis.”

  “Goodlady,” said Holdean in a voice barely over a murmur. He took Katriona’s hand in fingers as limps as sprats and made a mime of a kiss over them.

  “And this,” said Demion, looking down and smiling, “is Tyn Lydar, queen of the Morthrocksey Tyn.”

  Tyn Lydar performed an uncomfortable looking curtsey with such solemnity that Katriona smiled.

  “Please to meet you, Goodlady Tyn.”

  “I am just Tyn, goodlady, to the likes of you,” said the Tyn.

  “No no,” insisted Katriona. “You are a queen, and I am not. It is you that should be goodlady, and I goodwife.” Katriona performed her own curtsey.

  Tyn Lydar smiled uncertainly. “If you say so, madam.”

  “Well then!” said Demion. “My wife would see the mill, let us show it to her.”

  “Very good, Master Morthrock,” said Holdean. “If you would like to come this way?”

  The door, a nondescript twelve-panelled affair, one found on buildings throughout Karsa, swung wide at Holdean’s touch.

  Noise landed a blow upon the ears, followed shortly by a second hit to the nose from the smell. Not as unpleasant as that outside, but just as strong, thick and greasy. Katriona stepped into a world she had so far only read about. He
r father had refused to allow her into his own works.

  A vast room awaited her, lit by light slanting in from tall windows. The ceiling was high. A furiously spinning axle ran along the ceiling below thick wooden beams, disappearing through a hole in the far wall. Every ten feet a leather band ran out from the axle to a flywheel. These were attached to further wheels by another axle. More, smaller bands ran from these drive wheels over individual workdesks. Levers by the desks allowed the workers to engage or disengage their power band, so activating the machines they worked at. There were a great many machines, of three common designs. Tyn and humans stood at them, working metal.

  “The lathe room, madam.” Holdean spoke straight into her ear, and his breath tickled it in a manner that she found disagreeable.

  “We make all kinds of things in here,” boomed Demion. “But they’re all parts for the engines.”

  “These are assembled in another building?” said Katriona.

  “Yes,” said Holdean. “We have everything to produce glimmer engines. Metal comes from the smelters at the end of the site. Ore is refined into ingots, that are then cast into whatever shape we require at the foundry, my chief area of responsibility.” He said this as if it were a death sentence, and not the path to respectability.

  “Do you not find the enterprise at the mercy of ore prices?”

  Holdean looked at her curiously. “No. Indeed, that was precisely what Uncle Demiaron wished to avoid. Ore is available from many sources, refined metal from fewer.”

  “Each tier of processing narrows the pool of suppliers,” shouted Katriona over the racket. “By taking the process back to the providers of raw materials you should have a wider choice of supply, and therefore more command of the price.”

  Holdean and Demion shared a glance. Demion shrugged.

  “That is the theory,” Katriona went on, “but does it in effect work? I have read, as a matter of fact, that it is a fallacy.”

  She walked on ahead, not truly desiring an reply.

  Katriona headed down a row of workers, looking over their shoulders. Exposed machinery clattered and whirred everywhere. Showers of metal sparks fountained from cutting machines. Young boys stood to hand behind these workers, pails of water in their hands. There were more children crawling about in the guts of the machines. They crabbed their ways around pistons and shafts that could rip the flesh from their limbs as if they were hunting frogs in the woods, pulling out sharp curls of swarf and putting them into buckets. All of them had cuts on their legs and arms.