The Iron Ship (36 page)

“You have to call me that anyway, Veremond, I
do
outrank you.”

“Fair point.
Sir
.”

“Another soldier!” said Jakkar, as if only then noticing Rel’s uniform. “We don’t need more soldiers. We need more scholars!”

“The colonel does not agree,” said Veremond. Jakkar gave him a black look.

“The colonel is short-sighted.” The clattering of knives and spoons on pewter plates, the hubbub of voices and the fragile, edged quality that the glass walls lent to the sound made it hard to catch what the man opposite you was saying, but Jakkar spoke with such loudness that Rel glanced worriedly at Estabanado, sure he must have heard. “Look at this place!” Jakkar raised his hands and cast his eyes upwards. The others could not help but follow. For a moment Rel took in the soaring vaulting over their heads, made like everything else in the fort from seamless black glassy stone. “A world of wonders around us, and it is treated as a common barracks!”

“Come now, Jakkar,” said Deamaathani. “This is not a common barracks. The place is full of disgraced lordlings. It is a fascinating place. There is no better collection of military uniforms in all of Ruthnia. It is a fine display. And then there is the interplay of character and etiquette. It is truly fascinating to watch. I could do it all day, I could. Look!” Deamaathani sucked his spoon clean and pointed it across at another table. “The military attaché from Macer Lesser will not sit with the attaché from Maceriya. Both of them vie for the friendship of the military attaché from Marceny. But, and here’s the thing, the Maceriyan is a captain, the Marcenian is a lieutenant, and therefore believes that the lieutenant should be courting his attention.”

“Why? Is the Marcenian some beauty?” joked Rel.

“The only beauties here are from the Queendom, and they keep to themselves,” said Deamaathani. “The Maceriyan successors’ kingdoms’ shy wooing of one another is not about mutual affection. There’s trade rights at the root of all that.”

“Aren’t these people here to be soldiers?” said Rel.

“Half of them are, the rest are sent with a whole library of orders to pursue. If you want an education in the application of national interest within the Hundred, then this is the place to be,” said Deamaathani. “Deals are struck here. It is one of the few places that so many different nations mingle without the restrictions experienced at the Assembly of Nations. A delightful paradox—these men are all here for some minor misdemeanour or other, and yet they are given sensitive tasks that would stretch a diplomat. They try very hard, of course. All of them would much rather be somewhere warmer.”

“Some of them are diplomats, I am sure,” said Rel.

“There are a few,” said Deamaathani. “You can tell; those are the ones the real soldiers will not speak with.”

“I find it all immensely complicated, and therefore tedious,” said Rel.

“You think the Maceriyan triad complicated? “said Deamaathani gleefully. “The various rankings and intrigues of the Oberlanders outmatch that by far. Listen, I am a master of the seventh magisterial art. I am equally well versed in true magecraft. I can imbue steel with will, bind fiends from the fifth hell to my command, and softly fry you where you sit with a gesture like that.” He snapped his fingers decisively. “And I find their squabbles incomprehensible.”

“I became a soldier to avoid complicated issues such as this.”

“Really? You call seducing the wife of your commanding officer’s close friend uncomplicated? You are more stupid than you appear,” said Deamaathani. Veremond chuckled.

“I probably am,” admitted Rel. “I trade a lot on my looks.”

Deamaathani grinned. “Fine they are too.”

“Really,” said Rel, snapping his fingers. “Like that?”

“It takes a little more effort than just that,” Deamaathani snapped his fingers again. “But I can do as I say, so tread carefully my friend.”

“I always thought magisters were dry, dusty academics,” said Rel. Deamaathani was anything but; young, vital and muscular as the soldiers.

“I am a warlock, a battle wizard,” said Deamaathani. They all grinned at the ridiculous title. “Estabanado has me sending his messages because there is no one else with the talent to do so, unless you count that dried up old witch in Railhead, but it is not the pinnacle of my ability.”

“There’s not much money in all that fairy-tale stuff, is there?” said Rel. “That’s what I heard.”

“There are more remunerative branches of my calling, but nothing can match the feeling of raw power that manipulating wild magic in battle can bring.”

“But you are a magister.” said Rel. “Not a follower of the Iapetan School.”

“It is possible to follow the new tradition and respect the old. Few of my colleagues accept this, but there is wisdom inherent in both paths. That is why I am here. It is an unpopular philosophical standpoint at the university.”

“I wish you had arrived earlier sir,” said Veremond. “He’s never been so candid.”

“I find him fascinating,” said Jakkar. “And I am bored. I bore easily. Easily! You people are no stranger to magic, surely captain. Karsa is overrun by Tyn.”

“I suppose so,” said Rel. “I never really thought about it. They are just
there
.”

“There are more Tyn there than you can believe,” said Veremond. “Have you ever been to Karsa?”

“No,” said Deamaathani.

“You see them everywhere, as workers, servants. Shopkeepers! I was rather scared when I was there the first time.”

“So you should be,” said Deamaathani. “There is one forest in Amaranth where Wild Tyn are reputed still to dwell. Nobody ever goes in there, because if they do, it is reputed that they do not come out again. It is not true, sadly. I went within its borders and found no Tyn.”

“They don’t like to be found unless they wish to be found,” said Veremond darkly.

“I’ve never had any trouble,” said Rel. “My tailor is a Tyn. He’s always in his shop.”

“In your land the Tyn live among you. Elsewhere, they are the subject of fear. Have you never thought why?” said Deamaathani.

“There was a king or somesuch. It’s just a legend. I mean, they’re just there. People, like you and I.”

“They are not,” said Veremond.

“You listen to your grandmother overly much,” said Rel.

“Tyn. Interesting,” said Jakkar. “But the Morfaan are the most interesting. The Tyn are woodland creatures, little better than beasts. They have never built, never triumphed, they simply are, tied to rock or stream or tree. And so they fall before those who are not, who do build and who do triumph and who can leave such ridiculous impedimenta behind. The true culture of this world was Morfaan. It has not been bettered. Nor will it be. I will prove it.”

Veremond leaned back to get up. “Excuse me, sir. I need to make water.” Veremond took his chance to whisper to Rel as he got up from the table. “Watch out for Deamaathani, sir, he’s getting very friendly. You know what they say about the blues.” He clapped Rel on the shoulder and departed, for the moment.

Deamaathani gave him a long look over his spoon. Rel coloured and, in desperation, plunged back into Jakkar’s conversation.

“You may have something there.” Rel said to Jakkar. “I thought the Morfaan ruins of Perus were impressive, but this...”

“The remains there are ruins, as you say. This is a living building, even if it is used as a barracks. Once mighty, there remains but a pair of Morfaan alive in this world. We have much to learn from their culture’s remains. This place should be one of study. Not this ludicrous social display.”

“We guard the way,” said Rel.

“Your oath? Nonsense. There has been no credible threat from the Black Sands for three hundred years. The modalmen are depleted, the Uncertain Provinces of the sands pinned in place by the webs of iron. It is time we stopped being fearful of the past and investigate it for our betterment,” Jakkar said.

“Jakkar is impatient, he feels he will die before the great age of discovery begins,” said Deamaathani.

“Why don’t you speak with the Morfaan themselves? They are on the Council of Nations.”

“It is a sop to the past. The Morfaan have no power,” said Jakkar. “The two that remain know nothing.”

“You have met them?”

Jakkar nodded. “Twice. In secret, and it was hard to arrange. They are ignorant of the arts of their ancestors. Ceremonial. Adornment. They have the understanding of children.”

“In what way?” asked Rel, genuinely interested in the face of Jakkar’s brusque manner.

“Ask a human child how a glimmer engine works, would he know?”

“I suppose not.”

“Do you?”

Rel waved his hand and pulled a face. “The generalities, yes.”

“The specifics? Could you, goodman”—Deamaathani smiled at Jakkar’s incorrect form of address. Rel suspected it was deliberate. Jakkar went on, waggling his spoon at Rel and spilling the gravy from his stew on the table—“build one?”

“No.”

“And you are the son of the great Gelbion Kressind, brother to Arkadian Vand’s pupil, and an adult to boot. So it is with the Morfaan. Children. I need practicality, pure knowledge!”

“My father says it is our turn now,” said Rel. “Perhaps we should go our own way.

“Ah! That is why we should study the past. Your father would do well to remember what happened to the Morfaan.”

“Nobody knows, surely?”

“They could do things we could not. Their artefacts defy the passage of time. They possessed a civilisation that if we could piece it together, all would see that it dwarfs our own. And yet they are no longer masters of this place. That should tell us all we need to know. This desert before us? Rich in remains. It is my hypothesis that the Black Sands were once, long ago, not a desert at all, but a rich land. We look to Old Maceriya for the centre of the Morfaan civilisation, but that is a remnant, nothing more. The last stronghold, a guttering torch passed on to the Old Maceriyan Empire by a dying people, before their light went out. I theorise that their homeland might have been here, in the sands.”

“The desert is no place to live,” said Veremond, returning to the table.

“Destroyed. In war,” said Jakkar shortly. “Made unfit for life by weaponry and arts we could not comprehend. One must not underestimate the age of this place, nor the power of those who built it. This material, the glass of the Glass Fort. Impossible to cut, break or shape. But you have seen the ruins on the opposite cliff?”

“Yes,” said Rel. He shifted uneasily. “I admit the question has bothered me: what did it?”

“Just so!” said Jakkar, jabbing his spoon again at Rel. “We are children playing in the burned palaces of our fathers. The Morfaan are a warning to us. We should heed it.”

“Against what?” asked Rel. “They are no more.”

“It is not them we should fear,” said Jakkar.

“Then what is your warning against?”

Deamaathani smiled a humourless smile. “Hubris.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A Thief Uncovered

“A
ND HERE.
T
HERE
are changes to be made here.” Katriona ran her fingers over a fine pen and ink diagram of the interior of the mill.

“This is a large change to the interior layout of a workshop,” said Demion doubtfully.

“It is. I have been following the work of Thortha Bannda of Iruz. He came to the city last week and I attended his lecture.” Katriona said.

“I had no idea he was here.”

“He has gone now. Most fascinating.” She pointed to a slim book. “His work.”

“You propose to apply it to the mill?”

“I do.”

“All the mill? His is a much smaller enterprise.”

“It is, but he has proven it works, I see no reason why not take his procedures and amplify them in scale.”

Demion cleared his throat in embarrassment. “You will have to apprise me more fully. I am unfamiliar with his thinking.”

Katriona patted his arm. “Of course. Bannda proposes the institution of a line of assembly to quicken the industrial process. As we have it, this assembly of one thing by one worker from beginning to end is not a clever a use of their time.”

“How so?”

“A Tyn or man has to know every step in the process. This requires time to learn. Moving from one set of tools to another takes time. Collecting multiple parts and materials in one place takes time. And if the worker leaves or dies, then training a replacement takes—”

“Time, yes, yes, I see. But what is the alternative?” Demion bent over the diagram.

“As depicted here. A long table, one that runs the length of the workshop. Each worker is responsible for one step and one step alone of the assembly process. That part done, the article is passed to the worker to their right, who completes the next step, and then onto another, who completes a third. Parts and pieces are delivered by others in bulk, all the same type. Each worker therefore requires only one set of tools, they do not need to reconfigure their bench for each task, and do not need to leave their place.”

“All the parts and pieces are delivered separately?”

“Yes.”

“What if they do not fit together?”

“They must be made to fit together. I have here,” she dug under the papers and pulled out a sheaf of paper bound in cheap cardboard, “the most up-to-date rulings of Karsan weights and measures. If we adopt these fully, so that one tenth of an inch is the same whosoever might make a part or piece, we might standardise our components fully.”

“Nobody fully applies those, it takes too much time.”

“The reason they were proposed, my husband, is that they are efficient. Once the initial time is spent, much time will be saved.”

Demion scrutinised the plans again. “The work will be repetitive. I don’t know, Katriona. The assembly workers are among our best. Bored workers can become fractious.”

“That is the beauty of this process. It can be performed by those of limited intellectual capacity. They can be gainfully employed, to our and their mutual benefit. Those of greater ability can train the others, and I also intend to move them periodically from one part of the process to the next, so forestalling boredom. The other processes in the factory will still require great skill; the smelter, the tooling shops, some of the finishing, all that. The lathes, grinders, bores and all else require setting precisely. All these are skilled tasks. The most able could be trained in multiple roles. When this succeeds, we will need to expand our operations, after all. But it is here, at the final stage where the parts are gathered and assembled, laboriously, that we experience a bottleneck. This plan will remove that, allowing us, I estimate, to increase production three or four times over. Even our most complicated articles, the glimmer engines, can be assembled in this way.”