“She be all right…master Dorrin?”
Dorrin eases Petra onto the stretcher. “I hope so…”
“White bastards…”
They carry the injured woman back to the Black Hammer, though it takes four of Reisa’s troopers, including Quenta, to ease the stretcher between the grappled ships.
Dorrin slowly reenters the deckhouse and climbs to the pilot house.
“Hadn’t you better take care of that shoulder?” Tyrel asks.
Dorrin looks stupidly at the gash in his shoulder, its throbbing lost in the anguish of Petra and Reisa, and his own headache. “Oh…” He uses the last of the astra, and Tyrel helps him bind it.
“The shaft fixed?”
“For a time. You need to figure out something better, though.”
Dorrin sighs. He is always trying to figure out something better. “Cast off.”
Tyrel raises his eyebrows. “Release grapples.”
When the Hammer stands well clear of the Serpent, Kyl turns to Dorrin. “Do you want us to fire her?”
“No. Not unless we have to.”
Dorrin turns his attention to the remainder of the fleet. More than ten ships have already turned back westward, their sails tiny white triangles upon the horizon.
Another handful, each bearing a wizard, circles just beyond the Hammer and the Serpent.
“Head for that one.” Dorrin jabs at the largest, a bark with a high freeboard.
Once again, the fireballs splash off the black iron as the Hammer plows toward the bark, disregarding the wind.
“Run up a parley flag.”
The white banner with the blue stripe flutters upon a short jackstaff aft of the pilot house. Shortly, a similar banner flies from the bark bearing the nameplate Whitefire.
When the Hammer is abeam the bark, Dorrin opens one of the iron shutters and calls out to the man at the railing. “I’d like you to take a message back to the High Wizard.” Dorrin manages a half-bow, one hand on the iron shutter.
The captain yells back, between the hissing of swells and spray. “That’s not for me to say, Master. I can only ask the White one.”
“I know that.” Dorrin nods, and drops a waxed pouch containing a heavy parchment and a brief message, the first of three Dorrin had Liedral prepare almost an eight-day earlier, into a basket. The young seaman attaches the basket to a long-handled pole and extends it across the gap between the ships until an equally young seaman on the bark can take the pouch. The dark pouch is passed to the ship’s captain and then carried aft.
“Stand off, or whatever you call it,” Dorrin orders.
The wizard on the Whitefire has only one response to the request—another barrage of fireballs.
“Idiots!” snaps Dorrin, turning to Kyl.
“A set of the nasty ones?” asks his brother.
Dorrin nods, and winces at the headache that strikes behind his eyes.
“Fire rockets.”
Five rockets depart the Hammer, each landing with a gout of flame upon the wooden-hulled Whitefire, a flame that clings and spreads until the Fairhaven ship is a torch upon the water.
Shortly, the Hammer chugs up beside a third Fairhaven ship to pass across another pouch.
Dorrin closes his eyes, not that it matters, because, between the blindness and the headache, he can no longer see.
This time, when the Hammer stands off to wait for the response, there are no fireballs, only a double dip of the parley flag.
Kyl puts the second pouch in the basket for the master of the Pride of the Easthorns. The master even leaves the parley flag in place as his ship heels and turns westward. The other three ships carrying wizards follow.
Dorrin wipes his forehead and turns in Tyrel’s general direction. “Let’s head back. No sense in wasting coal.”
“I think we have enough to spare.” Tyrel laughs.
“I wish you’d burned them all.” Reisa stands at his elbow, and her low voice blazes.
“It won’t heal Petra.”
“I know. And it was her choice. But I still hate the bastards.”
“And I…I do like seeing…” Dorrin’s shoulders sag. He should be strong, like Creslin, and to light with the consequences, but he enjoys looking at Liedral, at the sea. Even now, he worries whether, this time, his sight will return. The pounding in his skull is not so pronounced as when he destroyed the Gallosian levies outside Kleth, but it seems that each use of order for destruction requires less impact to create head-wrenching pain and blindness—blindness that has been temporary so far.
“I know.” Reisa touches his shoulder, and he can feel her pain, the sources past and distant, and present and near. “Letting them make their own choices and knowing they did doesn’t always help. Someday, you’ll understand that better.”
Dorrin already understands that. How many have suffered so far for his dreams? He does not remind Reisa of that. Instead, he says, “The world, and the Balance, don’t care much for what we feel. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel.”
Reisa drops her hand. “That’s why you’re a great wizard…and why so many will offer themselves up for you. Somehow, along the way, you learned to keep your feelings and your dreams without betraying either.” Reisa slips away and down the ladder to check on Petra once again. Dorrin grasps the railing to balance himself against the rolling as Tyrel brings the Hammer about on the last course line into harbor.
“What now, Master Dorrin?” asks the captain conversationally.
“We build a better version of the Hammer. And a Black city. What else?”
“Darkness help us if’n you’d been White,” mumbles the captain.
Dorrin turns his sightless eyes eastward toward the hillside above Nylan, wondering how Liedral is, and whether he should have allowed her to come.
CLXXXII
Dorrin pauses at the door, then knocks. Beside him, Liedral is silent.
“Master Dorrin, come in.” Rylla stands back from the doorway.
“I just wanted to see how Kadara and Lers were. I had to leave in a bit of a hurry.”
“I know. Rushing off to teach those Whites a lesson. We saw it all from the porch—the ship you fired, and the rest of them scuttling away across the Gulf.”
“Even Kadara?” asks Liedral.
“I wouldn’t let her. But she must have made me tell her three times what happened.”
Dorrin rubs his forehead and gingerly feels his way into the house. He can sense Rylla’s hand going to her mouth. “You’re not…”
“Hush…not a word,” he says. “Not a word.” His fingers lightly hold Liedral’s hand as she guides him to the bedroom. He stands just inside the door.
Kadara lies in the bed with her sleeping son cradled next to her. “Rylla told me Lers wouldn’t have lived if you hadn’t been here…and that you risked losing the battle to save him.”
Dorrin drops his head. “I can’t say that. We had time.”
“You have to be honest, don’t you? No matter what it costs?”
“Yes. Mostly, at least.”
“I suppose that’s why you have to calculate everything—probably even…never mind. I know you don’t, but still…it’s hard.”
Sensing her anger and the deep and endless pain, Dorrin touches her shoulder. “The Balance, and the world, don’t care much for what we feel. But I still feel, and it still hurts.”
Kadara’s fingers curl gently around the infant. “That’s why you’re a great one…and why Brede is dead, and why everyone looks up to you. You can hold on to order without losing your feelings.”
“You give me too much credit. I just…tried to do…what I had to.” Dorrin’s head continues to throb, and his knees feel weak.
“You’re tired, aren’t you?” Kadara asks.
“Yes.”
“So am I. Take him home, Liedral. And…Dorrin…”
Dorrin looks toward her, sightlessly.
“…thank you for my son. Brede would thank you too…and I hope it won’t be too
long before you can see again.”
Dorrin can’t help grinning.
“…can’t fool me…Take him home and make him sleep, Liedral.”
“Get well, Kadara,” answers the engineer gruffly as he leaves.
Liedral edges him into the hallway. They step onto the front porch, and she says, “You’ve given too many people too much. Kadara was right. You need some rest.”
“What about you?”
Liedral laughs, a sound that is edgy, bell-like, and happy, all in one. “I have you…and more. I was more fortunate than Kadara. I think we’ll have a daughter.”
“How do you know? I can’t even tell.”
“It doesn’t matter. We will have a daughter.” She kisses him full upon the lips, warmly and without reservation. “We need to get you fed and rested. You really shouldn’t have stopped to see Kadara.”
“I had to.”
“I know.”
The late afternoon wind whips around them with a chill that borders on frost. They have covered perhaps two hundred cubits toward their home when Liedral takes a deep breath. “Oh, darkness!”
Dorrin can sense just that, although he still can see nothing except occasional white flares of light. “What is it?”
“Your damned father! He can’t even let you rest.”
Dorrin gathers himself together. “Let’s get on with it.”
They walk through the shadows Dorrin cannot see and into the house.
“The Black wizard is in the kitchen,” Frisa announces. “He says he’s your father. Is he? I didn’t know your father was a big wizard.”
“He’s my father.” Dorrin walks into the kitchen.
Before he can speak, Liedral steps almost in front of him. “Merga, get something hot, and some bread and cheese for Dorrin before he collapses. Dorrin, you sit down now. Right here.” She pulls out the chair at the end of the table and guides him into it.
“Would you rather I come back?” Oran says mildly.
“No. I just need something to eat. It’s been a day.”
“Here’s the bread, ser.”
Dorrin manages to break off a corner and begins to chew.
Liedral, sitting on the end of the bench to his left, uses the cheese slicer on the yellow brick cheese, then hands Dorrin a slab. Only then does she turn to Oran. “Would you like some?”
“No…that’s fine.”
After he has chewed and swallowed the first chunk of bread and cheese, and sipped some hot cider, Dorrin can feel the shakiness in his knees begin to subside, and the throbbing in his head decreases. He rubs his forehead. “Why did you come?”
“To see how you would handle the Whites, and then to talk to you. Your ship was very effective, it seems.”
Dorrin raises his head, still letting the warm vapor from the mug seep around his face. “That’s true. Tyrel really didn’t need me. He and Kyl could have burned every ship in the Fairhaven fleet.” A sharpening of the throbbing in his head causes him to revise his statement. “Not at once. They would have needed to return for more rockets. But I’d guess around ten ships like the Black Hammer will be more than adequate to ensure that no one ever restricts trade with us again.”
“Why can’t they build ships like that?”
“Because you need black iron, and they can’t handle order. It takes order-hardened iron to make the shields and the rockets. You put powder in anything but black iron, and any chaos wizard can touch it off.” Dorrin shrugs. “I suspect that the Nordlans and Hamorians will be able to put lower-pressure steam engines on their sailing ships. In fact, I’ll even give them the design.”
“What?”
“We’ll trade for the design. We’ll still need more trade with the eastern continents. Liedral’s working up what we need.”
“Is that wise?”
“Why not? I doubt that we could keep it a secret for long. Why not take credit for it? They’ll have to use regular iron, and with the chaos of the heat, it’s really not suited for anything but ocean ships at low pressure. A good schooner could still sail rings around them, but the engines would be handy for calms and getting in and out of ports.”
“Are you sure?”
Dorrin sighs, not caring if his father hears the exasperation. “I tried not to use black iron. You can’t get enough containment and pressure for a high-power engine—at least I can’t—without a lot of black iron. If you use a lot of regular iron, the engine gets too heavy, and it doesn’t generate much power. If it’s light enough to get the power, it’s only a couple of days before things start cracking and breaking. Maybe on some other world—or the planets of the Angels—but not here, not with the force of chaos and the Balance.”
“Why did you let most of the Fairhaven fleet return home?”
“You should have figured that out. If I destroyed half a dozen chaos wizards at once, the Balance would want to concentrate that chaos in one focus. Candar doesn’t need another Jeslek. Besides, sending them back to Candar is bound to disorganize chaos there even more.” Dorrin laughs. “Disorganized chaos—what an absurdity.”
“You’ve made everything a matter of calculations and numbers, haven’t you? There’s no art…”
“There never was,” Dorrin snaps. “The Balance is mathematical in nature, not some god of the ancient Angels. That’s why you’ll still win.”
For the first time, Oran is silent, and Dorrin can feel the confusion.
“Look…Every bit of order that’s placed in black iron, every bit of order concentrated in a steam-powered ship or a black iron rocket means that there has to be an equal amount of chaos somewhere. Chaos can be concentrated through wizardry. Generally, order can’t except through machines and black iron. No matter what I feel, Recluce can’t afford order machines—only those necessary for her defense. Building machines into every hamlet in Recluce would only guarantee greater chaos in Fairhaven, perhaps enough to raise hundreds of Jesleks.”
“What…how can…”
“The Black Order of Engineers stays in the Black City of Nylan. You and the Brotherhood just keep doing what you’re doing. Except…” Dorrin pauses. “Anyone who wants to come to Nylan and whom we accept can stay.”
Oran looks at the floor, the smooth-planked, evenly matched, near-perfect flooring. Then he focuses on the red-headed engineer at the other end of the table. “How will you do that?”
“A wall should do the trick. The symbolism is what will make it effective. But a tall wall of ordered black stone separating the peninsula and Nylan from the rest of Recluce will make it real enough for most, and for those who don’t accept it…well, Nylan is where they belong…or Candar.”
“So you’ll just take all the rebels?”
“I’m not a Temple priest.” Dorrin snorts. “You made a simple mistake, my dear father. You never understood the difference between rebelling against something and wanting to create something. Even so, you were right.”
Oran waits.
“Steel and ideas have to be tempered and quenched.” Dorrin shrugs. “Why should I change what works?”
Oran clears his throat. “You know, son, you’re a bigger man than I ever was.”
“Nonsense.” Dorrin flushes. “I just did what had to be done.”
Oran nods. “How did you know just what had to be done? How many people know what has to be done and still don’t act?” The tall wizard steps forward and around the table, setting his hands on the shoudlers of the shorter engineer for a moment before releasing his son.
Dorrin’s eyes burn, and he cannot speak, not just because of his father’s approval, but because of all those others who have helped pay the price, and who will continue to pay—like Kadara, and Petra, and Quenta, and the dead Black trooper whose name he does not even know.
“Your lady trader is right, son. You are one of the great ones, even though no one will ever list your name with Ryba’s or even with Creslin’s or Megaera’s. In that, I suspect, you are most fortunate.”
Liedral, who has remai
ned silent, takes Dorrin’s left hand, squeezes it. “A live engineer is more fortunate than a dead hero.”
Dorrin squeezes her hand in return as his father, the tall black wizard, bows deeply. “You need rest, I think. But come to see us when you can. You are welcome anywhere on Recluce. The Council would have decided that without me, but I’m glad I can agree with them.” His narrow face breaks into a smile as his hand sweeps around the room. “But we all know this is your home. You are, after all, the magic engineer.” Then he bows and is gone.
“It is home, isn’t it?” Dorrin swallows.
Liedral squeezes his hand and lets go. “You knew that a long time ago.” She grins at him. “You magic engineer.”
CLXXXIII
The swirls in the mirror depict perhaps a dozen ships bearing the red thunderbolt banner straggling back into the Great North Bay. Cerryl raises a finger, and the image vanishes from the mirror. “Now what?”
“You send out another fleet, this time one that will follow orders,” Anya says lazily from the reclining chair. Her eyes focus on the high gray clouds visible through the tower window slit beyond the table. On one side of the table sits a deep basin of cold water.
“Sterol was right,” Cerryl adds, his voice conversational as he looks at the box on the small table, a box containing a gold-painted amulet.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to let that nobody on Recluce humiliate us?” Anya’s voice takes a harder tone.
“There is a Balance, and we can accept it, or fight it. Everyone who has fought it has lost. The trick is to make it work for you.”
“You sound like you’re weaseling out, Cerryl. We can’t have that.” Anya sits up straight in the chair, but does not rise to her feet.
“Why don’t you listen, for a moment? It won’t hurt.”
“I’m listening.” The words are cold, yet white flames lurk beneath her eyes.
“This smith-wizard builds machines. Those machines must contain chaos-fired steam or water. That means they embody great, great order. If he builds many of his machines, he increases the amount of chaos in the world. That would increase our power more greatly than his, because his order would be locked in those machines.”
The Magic Engineer Page 67