The Magic Engineer

by Jr. L. E. Modesitt

  “A small windmill with a crank to make the blades go, I think.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to carve it?”

  “Yes. But it’s more interesting out of iron, and I can use the template to stamp out the gears.”

  “Could you do that with real gears?”

  “Hardly. You have to cut them. They use special machines for the pump gears.” He takes the other half of the template, black iron, and sets it where he can reach it quickly. “They have to fit together just right.”

  Dorrin takes the tongs and lifts one of the smaller rods from his own rack and eases it into the forge. “Here, for a toy, I don’t have to be quite as exact, but I need to make sure the two gears mesh just right.”

  Vaos continues pumping. “This about right?”

  Dorrin nods again, watching as the metal heats. When it is cherry red, he brings it back to the anvil and begins to fuller it into a smaller octagonal cross-section. He returns it to the forge as necessary during the fullering. When the cross-section matches the template, he sets the circular die—almost like a round-bottom swage with a square base—into the anvil’s hardie hole, and places the metal in the forge once more.

  Next, using glancing blows on the end of the fullered rod, he begins to upset the end that will fit into the swage die. Another reheating, and two solid blows to the unfullered end, and the small gear wheel is forged. A last blow with the hot set to cut the forged piece clean and he sets the wheel on the forge bricks to cool.

  “You doing another one?” asks Vaos.

  “Probably three tonight. That’s half. I’ll do two more like that, and then three of the end with the crank.”

  “That’s a lot of work for toys.”

  “That’s just the beginning. I’ll have to grind the edges, file them smooth, and polish them before fitting them to the wood.” Dorrin retrieves the rod stock from the forge. “A little slower on the bellows.”

  Vaos wipes his forehead. “Least it’s warm here.”

  LXVI

  When the cold air strikes Meriwhen like a whip, the mare whickers and sidesteps. Zilda backs away from the cold air, looking up at Dorrin.

  “I don’t think you want out here,” Dorrin says. The goat chews on a mouthful of straw.

  “Easy…easy.” Dorrin pats Meriwhen’s neck, then closes the barn door. The breath from his words drifts away in a white line. He eases up into the saddle, a saddle hard from the cold even inside the barn, and turns the mare eastward, out toward Rylla’s cottage. His hands touch the staff. While he will not need it at the healer’s, he may need it on the way to see Willum.

  The strong plume of white from the chimney indicates that the healer has been up for a time, and the two sets of fresh footprints in the dusting of snow that covers the packed snow path to her door show that she has visitors.

  Dorrin looks for a more sheltered place to tie Meriwhen before he finally leads the mare up to the south side of the cottage, where he ties the reins to an elder bush trunk. He leaves the staff in the holder—it will be more than safe there.

  After stamping his boots mostly free of snow, he knocks and steps inside, closing the door quickly. “Rylla, it’s Dorrin.” He takes the small broom off the stand and brushes his boots clean, then opens his jacket and takes it off, so warm is the cottage.

  “’Fraid I’d have to wait all morning for you, young fellow.”

  In the room before the fire are a woman and a child. The girl—although the mother looks barely beyond childhood herself—cradles her left arm with her right, and her face is tight and pinched. She wears a cut-down herder’s vest, so worn that the sheep’s wool is brown and the leather is lined and grimy.

  “Little Frisa, here, got her arm caught in a stall door.” Rylla’s voice is almost flat.

  “Gerhalm didn’t see her in time. He really didn’t,” explains the mother. Her voice cracks. She wears only a worn and patched wool cloak that may have once been blue.

  Dorrin can see the redness in the mother’s eyes, and a different kind of pain than that of the daughter. He takes a step toward Frisa, but the little girl shrinks back against her mother’s stained brown trousers. Dorrin stops, looking around until he sees that Rylla has moved the stool into the far corner, almost touching the small three-shelf bookcase that bears no more than a dozen volumes at most.

  “Frisa needs her arm looked at. She’s a mite skittish,” Rylla adds in the same too-calm voice.

  The little girl’s dark eyes flicker from the older woman to Dorrin and back to the floor in front of the hearth.

  After picking up the stool, Dorrin seats himself and looks at Frisa. “I don’t know much about girls,” he begins slowly, not looking directly at the child, even while he tries to extend a sense of reassurance to her. “I do have a mare. I suppose you’d call her a girl horse. Her name is Meriwhen.”

  “Silly name for a mare.” Rylla’s voice is gruff.

  “Well, she said her name was Meriwhen. What I could I say?” Dorrin shrugs, then puts his hands on his knees. “Is your name Kitten-in-the-Snow?”

  Frisa continues to look at the plank floor in front of the hearth.

  “Or is it Filly-Who-Runs-Too-Fast?”

  Dorrin lets the silence draw out before speaking again. “I suppose Meriwhen was a filly once. She told me that she hurried too much when she was little, but I didn’t know her then.”

  “Horses…don’t…talk.”

  “Meriwhen does. When we ride a long ways, she has a lot to say. Sometimes she talks about the grass, and sometimes she complains about the horseflies, and sometimes…” He pauses. “She’s a big girl, but you’ll be a big girl someday, too.” Dorrin swallows at the knife of fear that strikes from the mother, forcing a smile instead, trying to reassure the child. “Meriwhen can be silly. When we’re out in the meadows, sometimes she wants me to take off her saddle, and she wants to roll in the grass. She likes the smell of green grass.”

  “You’re…silly.”

  “That’s what my mother said to me a long time ago. I guess I never did grow up.”

  Frisa looks shyly at Dorrin, but remains with her back pressed against her mother’s legs.

  Dorrin looks into the fire, trying to build more reassurance into the frightened girl. “Maybe that’s why Meriwhen and I get along. After we look at your arm, would you like to meet Meriwhen?”

  “You really have a horse?” asks the mother.

  “He’s not exactly an impoverished healer apprentice, Merga,” Rylla says.

  Dorrin grins. “Meriwhen is quite real. I did tie her to the bushes next to the house—the elders, not the peppers.”

  “She’d better not eat them,” Rylla says.

  “I fed her before we left.”

  “Can I pat her?” asks Frisa.

  “After we fix your arm,” Dorrin responds.

  “It hurts.”

  “I know. Where does it hurt most?”

  “It just hurts.”

  Without standing, Dorrin eases off the stool and into a sitting position before the mother and the girl. “Can I see?”

  Frisa remains against her mother, but does not shrink away as Dorrin’s fingers brush the arm.

  “Needs a splint, I’d bet,” Rylla offers.

  Dorrin, sensing the break, nods. He can also feel the hunger. “Do you have a slice of bread? If she could chew that…”

  “She might choke.”

  He looks at Frisa. “We want to fix the hurt. It might hurt more for a moment, but it will get better. When we finish you can have some bread.”

  “Can I hold it now?”

  “Just an instant, child.”

  Rylla appears with the splint—a contraption made of canvas and oak ribs. Her eyes question Dorrin. He nods.

  “Help keep her still, Merga. Can you do that?” asks Rylla.

  Merga nods.

  “Oooooo…” Frisa moans, and tries to twist, but Rylla holds her fast as Dorrin, guided by his senses, lines up the ends of the bones, infusing t
he girl with order and reassurance as he does. “Ooo…” Her fingers crush the scrap of bread.

  Rylla tightens the splint straps while Dorrin keeps the arm straight.

  Dorrin touches Frisa’s forehead lightly. “It’s done, Frisa. If you don’t run into anything, it should heal straight.”

  Merga looks to Rylla, then to Dorrin.

  “Four to five eight-days, I’d guess,” he says slowly.

  “Can I see your horse?”

  “I’ll tell Merga what to do,” Rylla says. “You show her your horse.”

  “Can I have some more bread?” asks the child.

  “I’ll get it,” Dorrin says quickly, heading for the kitchen and the breadboard, and ignoring Rylla’s quickly smothered frown.

  Frisa grabs for the bread with her free hand when Dorrin comes back, and he scoops her up, deftly, but gently, careful not to touch the splinted arm.

  “Bring her back here in two eight-days for me to look at the arm. Don’t let anything hit it…” Rylla speaks slowly to the young mother as Dorrin opens and closes the cottage door.

  “Here you are.” Dorrin stops short of Meriwhen. The mare has nibbled on a small elder bush, but halted after a sampling. The healer grins. Elder bushes are bitter, very bitter. “This is Meriwhen.”

  Whuuuffff…the mare responds.

  “She’s…pretty.” Frisa’s breath forms a cloud around her head.

  The morning air is still now, and the snow sparkles in the light, so brightly that Dorrin must squint, a cruel brightness that reminds him, absently, of Fairhaven.

  Meriwhen suffers her forehead to be touched by Frisa’s unhurt arm. Frisa shivers, and Dorrin turns. “We need to go.”

  “’Bye, horsey.”

  Inside, Dorrin closes the door and sets Frisa on the floor.

  “He has a horsey, a black horsey.”

  Merga bows to Dorrin. “Thank you, great one.” Tears streak from her eyes, as she takes her daughter’s hand. “We must go.”

  Dorrin glances at Rylla, but the healer’s wrinkled face is calm. He opens the door and watches as they walk across the packed snow and ice.

  “Close the door, Dorrin. No sense in wasting the fire.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her the truth. You’re a great healer. A young one, but a great one.”

  “Darkness, I’m barely a decent smith, and not even that as a healer.”

  “Look, boy. You got enough order in your bones to shiver a White Wizard all the way to the tips of the Northern Ocean. I saw what you did for that girl.”

  “She didn’t get caught in a stall door. Her father beat them both. I really want to—”

  “You can’t go settling people’s lives for them.”

  “I know. I did what I could. It won’t be enough.”

  “It will be for a little while. And in healing you do what you can. Just knowing order isn’t all there is to healing.” The clear blue eyes that seem oddly young in the wrinkled face survey Dorrin from head to foot. “Does just a strong arm make a good smith?”

  “No.”

  “Does growing herbs tell you how to use them? ’Course not! You’re like all the other Blacks.” Rylla pauses and adds, “Maybe not as bad. Leastwise, you listen. Take a broken bone, like Frisa has. Bone’s stronger when it grows at its own pace, and the bones have to be put back where they fit together. How do you keep them together?”

  “You splint them, and add a touch of order.”

  “I can do the first, but only a Black healer can do the rest.”

  A knock on the door interrupts them.

  “Who be there?” rasps Rylla.

  “Werta…I still got this wart.”

  Rylla grins at Dorrin. “Come on in and close the door behind you.”

  Dorrin grins back. Warts, yet.

  LXVII

  The stillness has given way to a light wind, and the near-noon sun lights a bright blue-green sky. Dorrin unties Meriwhen from the elder bushes, swings into the saddle, checks his staff to ensure it is secure in the lanceholder, and urges Meriwhen toward Diev. In the left saddlebag are three sample toys—a small wagon, a windmill with a hand crank, and a miniature sawmill. There are two complete sets in the other bag.

  Meriwhen’s feet are sure upon the road now that the rollers have pressed it into a hard surface. They pass a freight sleigh stacked with barrels, whose driver cracks his whip as his two horses struggle in toward Diev.

  On the town side of the Weyel river bridge, the rolled and packed snow gives way to an uneven jumble of packed snow, ice, and partly uncovered paving stones. Dorrin lets Meriwhen set her own pace, and he loosens the top button of his jacket, conscious that he is making some progress in learning how to let his body deal with a cold that never reaches Recluce.

  All four chimneys at the Tankard are billowing white smoke, and a small stable boy is wrestling to unload a bale of hay from the farm sleigh. The beggar woman is nowhere in evidence.

  The space before the chandlery is empty, but smoke also rises from Willum’s chimney. Dorrin ties Meriwhen, pats her neck, and swings the saddlebags over his shoulder before taking his staff from the holder. Then he climbs the steps and opens the door to the chandler’s. The warmth billowing from the cast-iron stove in the center of the store is momentarily welcome, and he is careful to close the oak door behind him.

  The thin clerk behind the counter along the right wall looks through Dorrin. “Your business?”

  “I’m Dorrin.” He lifts the saddlebags. “I have some goods that ser Willum might be interested in.”

  “In late winter? Ha! Be on your way, fellow.” The clerk sets something on the shelf before him. “Selling to a chandler?”

  Dorrin turns to face the clerk head-on, and his eyes blaze. His voice is quiet, and his words seem to fill the store. “I am here to see Willum, and I do believe he will see me.”

  His face white, the clerk steps back. “I’ll see…ser.”

  Dorrin frowns as the other scuttles toward the back room. Why are people so difficult? And why does insisting on simple things make them so afraid? If Willum does not want to buy the toys, he certainly doesn’t have to.

  The blond chandler/trader steps out into the store from behind a dark green velvet curtain. The counter does not quite conceal the heavy club he holds, a stained oak length only slightly lighter than his brown trousers and dark leather vest. “You—” Then he sees the brown shirt under the jacket and the dark staff. “You’re the smith who’s the toymaker, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ser. I thought you might like to see some new ones.”

  “It’s all right, Roald.” Willum looks at the clerk emerging from the back room. “Sorry, fellow—is it Dortmund?”

  “Dorrin.”

  “Dorrin. We’ve had some smash and grabs lately. Times are hard.” He smiles politely. “Your curiosity was well received in Fenard. But”—he shrugs—“I doubt many have golds to spare now.”

  “So would I.” Dorrin sets the leather saddlebags on the counter and opens the left one. “These are a bit simpler.”

  Willum looks at the three toys, finally picking up the windmill and cranking it. “Well made. I have to say that. But times are hard.”

  “I understand. That also means you must have trouble finding unique items to trade.”

  Willum grins. “You should have been a trader, young Dorrin. You haggle with the best.”

  “You flatter me, master chandler.”

  “Hardly. You seem to have some idea of their value. And what are you asking—not that I can pay much, you understand?”

  “I thought you might get a half-silver, perhaps six pennies, for each of these.”

  “Six is stretching. I could offer a silver for all three.”

  Dorrin frowns. “A silver plus two, would be more like it.”

  “It’s not worth my time to take just three.”

  “If I made two more sets…then how about three and a half silvers?”

  “That w
ould be fine, but”—Willum shrugs again—“could you have them by tomorrow? Otherwise, I could offer but a silver plus one.”

  Dorrin smiles, and the chandler shakes his head.

  “Don’t tell me you have them?”

  Dorrin offers a wry smile. “I had hoped…” He opens the other bag and produces the other six.

  Willum inspects all six, minutely. “You do good work, fellow.” He coughs. “Roald—three and a half, please.”

  “Yes, ser.” The clerk eases behind Willum’s bulk and into the back room, without so much as looking at Dorrin.

  The chandler purses his lips, then asks. “I might also be interested in another curiosity…say by early spring?”

  “That might be possible.” Dorrin’s thoughts burn, since he has two older models for which he has no use. “Very probable, in fact.” His headache subsides, but not completely. He needs someone else to do the haggling, or he will have headaches severe enough that he will not be able to think straight.

  Roald reappears with the coins, which he passes to Willum. In turn, the trader puts them upon the counter. He still holds the club in his right hand, although his grip is relaxed. “There are your silvers, Dorrin.”

  “I thank you, master chandler. Later, might you be interested in other such toys?”

  “I might, but I know where to find you, should I need them quickly. If not, see me in perhaps three or four eight-days.” The chandler/trader looks toward the door, where a tall thin man enters. “Good day, Nallar.”

  “Terrible day, Willum. Terrible day. Need to talk about lamps.”

  Dorrin scoops up the coins and slips them into his purse. Then he nods, “Good day, ser Willum.”

  Willum nods, but says nothing as he steps along the counter to meet Nallar. Roald looks away from Dorrin’s glance. Dorrin puts the empty saddlebags over his shoulder and steps around the heat of the stove, heading back out into the cold.

  Outside, he pauses. Now that he is truly selling toys, should he follow Quiller’s advice and join the Guild? With a sigh, he turns Meriwhen toward the harbor.

  The harbor has but three piers, and the Port Council building is at the foot of the center pier of the three, a gray wooden structure two stories high. Next to the Port Council building is the smaller, shedlike building that holds the Guild. After tying Meriwhen at the far end of the rail that also holds a larger bay, Dorrin edges through the slushy snow to the building. No matter how hard the snow is packed in upper Diev, near the shore it is slushier, even when the sea is choked with ice floes. Sometimes, a brave coaster will run the ice, but it is a run for only the most experienced.