The Iron Ship (55 page)

He was disgusted with himself for thinking this.

He drew away nonetheless when she shivered and held up her arms for a return to embrace.

“It is cold,” she said softly.

“It is late,” said Guis weakly. “I should retire now. I must return in the morning.”

Her face hardened. “I see,” she said. The steel returned to her voice. “That is the way it is. I had hoped this would be different, for I hold you in affection. Very well, it is not to be.” She looked away to compose herself. “Before you are away to bed, there is one last thing that you must see.”

“I am very tired,” said Guis dismayed.

“You will see this,” said the countess. Her tone brooked no refusal. “You will see it now.”

Guis took an involuntary step forward. How his life was, pulled this way and that by things outside his control. His dismay grew.

“Look into the telescope.”

He did as he was ordered. The black surface of the Twin greeted him, a pit of hungry shadow. He was glad of the distance between him and it. “It is blurred.”

She leaned over him and adjusted something. The image leapt into sharp focus.

“What do you see now?”

“A lighter shade upon the black. Perhaps a cloud?”

“Not a cloud. Wait.”

“A flare! I see... fire?”

The countess ran her fingers down his back, he shuddered. Was it pleasure or repulsion? He could no longer tell them apart. “Fire upon the Twin. It grows in ferocity. Soon it will be visible to the naked eye. With each pass it draws closer, and closer, until it will be closer than it has been for four thousand years. Four thousand years ago, the Old Maceriyans fell from grace. Eight thousand years before that, the Morfaan’s power was broken, at some point in between the two they disappeared from the Earth but for their sorry ambassadors. I would bet Mogawn itself that it was eight thousand years before the present. Now disagree with me that things are not bound into endless cycles: the turning of the tides, the procession of the spheres, the track of the stars and seasons.” She leaned into his ear and whispered rancorously. “Lust, seduction, repulsion, regret, rejection. Over and over again, for all time. I welcome an end to it.” She pulled back. “So you see, my machine is not merely the plaything of a lonely woman, despised for her talents, mocked for her appearance. All things are cyclical. And I will prove it before the end.”

He cravenly kept his eye to the telescope’s eyepiece as she walked away from him. A second flare of bright orange burst on the black face of the Twin.

“Goodnight Guis, I trust you can find your own way back to your room. I will not see you away in the morning.”

Only when she was gone did he look up.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

The Winter Riots

K
ATRIONA SAT UP
late at home working. Her accounts were open before her, multiple volumes layered on top of each other. Tiredness was a sweet sensation, born from her diligence. Exhaustion won through hard work. She savoured it.

Her books were finally balancing. New procedures were being enacted across the site, and initial results were promising. Soon she could think about bringing more of the factory sheds into use again, and expanding the workforce further.

The sense of satisfaction was sublime. She could see the glory days of Morthrocksey returning.

The Tyn worked hard. One more casting session, and she would have provided her brother with the full complement of fuel rods for the
Prince Alfra
. He had secured the money from their uncle. Everything proceeded smoothly. She thought several times about stopping for the night, but the minutiae of the business was so absorbing she could not tear herself away from it.

For one brief moment, she was happy. A hammering at the front door shattered it.

“Laisa! Get that would you?” she called for her maid. She turned her attention back to the books. Downstairs voices were raised. A clatter of boots on stairs approached her study. The door burst inwards at the hand of Jon Cullen, the head of the factory nightwatch.

“Jon?” she said. “What do you want? Is it the mill?”

Laisa came up behind. “He wouldn’t wait, Goodlady Katriona!”

“Is Goodfellow Morthrock here?” Cullen said.

“I told you he ain’t!” said the maid.

“Demion is out at cards. If it’s the mill, you know to address your concerns to me.”

Jon shook his head. “It’s the both of you, begging your pardon goodlady, that I was wanting. I’d send for him if I were you. And you better come quick. There’s trouble.”

A tense ride to the mill through dark streets. They were quickly away from the well-lit boulevards of the new town and into the dark industrial districts, where the mills stood as beacons amid dark formations of terraced housing. The few glimmer lamps buzzed and crackled.

“It started about half an hour ago,” said Cullen. “A load of them arrived, pushed their way past my lads. I mean, what were we going to do? These are their friends and relatives, not burglars sneaking in at night.”

“How many are there?”

“About three, maybe four hundred.”

“That’s a third of the workforce!”

“If you include the Tyn it is,” he said.

“I most certainly do,” said Katriona.

“That might be the issue here, begging your pardon goodlady.”

They rounded the corner onto Morthrocksey Lane.

“Res Iapetus’s balls,” swore Jon. “Things have taken a turn for the worse.”

“They’ve torched one of the factory sheds!” Katriona shouted.

Jon had whipped the dogs all the way, and he whipped them all the harder to the gates. By the time they arrived all four of them foamed at the muzzle and panted heavily. Katriona jumped down and made for the gate. Beyond she could see the outline of the crowd. A single mass with many heads. All the gates were open. A line of nightwatchmen stood their ground in an arc around the main gate, defending an entrance already breached. There was shouting, a man on a box gesticulating, rousing the crowd. In the orange light of the burning shed he appeared demoniac. The crowd was spellbound.

Katriona hurried on. Jon’s hand closed around her bicep. “Best be careful, goodlady, the situation is ugly. Let me go first.”

The number of men Katriona still called her own was small, and they were armed with nothing but cudgels. From their faces she could see they would not willingly use them on their fellow workers. “We have sent for aid, goodlady, to the watch,” said Jon’s deputy.

“What have you done?”

“I... I only seek to perform my role, Goodlady Morthrocksa.”

“The watch will not come,” she said. “The whole factory is here. They will be vastly outnumbered. The watch will not come!”

“I...”

She stepped close to him, pointing behind her. “Do you not see? They will not send the watch, they will send the army!”

The man blanched. Now what had she done? Whatever was about to happen, he would carry the guilt with him forever. She turned, panicked. One of the factory sheds burned, fire licking from its windows. Shouts and the sound of breaking glass came from somewhere far away. The line of workers faced her and her loyal guards, grim faces lit by their lamps and the flames of the burning factory.

“Steady, Goodlady Katriona, he’s just doing his job,” said Jon.

“And if you did yours this would never have happened! You say you would not harm your friends and relations, but you will see them killed instead. Stop!” she said to the crowd. “What are you doing? It is your own livelihoods you are burning!” She looked at the mill. Smoke poured from a second building. The heat of the shed ablaze seared her front, the cold of the night chilled her back. “What have you done?”

Tears started from her eyes. The crowd ebbed and flowed around a knot of unmoving men about the demagogue. She realised she knew only a few of their names.

“Here she is! Here is the architect of your poverty!” cried the man on the box. She did not know him.

“Is there any here I know and trust and will speak with me?” she said.

The man grinned wolfishly at her.

Another pushed his way out. “Etwen I am, Goodlady Katriona,” he said. He carried a stout iron pole as a weapon.

“What is going on here? Why do you riot?”

“What kind of life do you suppose that we have? Toiling here from dawn to dusk, going home to cold houses that cause our children to sicken and die?”

“Why did you not come to me?”

“Why should we? What does a noble lady like you know of the lives of ordinary folk? This dream of yours to make and build, it is built on a foundation of bone and blood. Our bone, our blood!” shouted the demagogue.

Muted calls of “hear hear” came from the crowd.

“Would you have listened?” said Etwen.

“You have to go home. My men, they have called the watch. But they will not come.” She paused. “The army will come. Do you not see?”

The crowd quietened.

“Good, because we will show them the hard side of justice, the injustice we have had to suffer our entire lives!” shouted the demagogue.

The cheers grew loud again. The front ranks stepped closer, menacing her. Etwen held up his hand, staying them.

“Why now though, I do not understand? Why let it fester?” she said.

“It is because of them!” cried the demagogue. His finger descended, judgmental as a prophet’s. Where he pointed, the crowd parted.

Jeers came from the crowd as Tyns Lydar, Lorl and two others were pushed to the front and forced to their knees.

“Kado love,” spat Tyn Lydar. “All of evil.” Her scarf had been torn from her. Her face was bloody. The wrists of all were bound behind their backs.

“You offer them special preference, these things that live in our midst,” said the demagogue, “while you ignore the woes of your own kind!”

“They are not things!” protested Katriona.

“They are not human,” said Etwen, unsure.

“They give the evil eye!” someone from the crowd shouted.

Then another. “They spoil our rations. They steal our work!”

“Aye! And slaves we are and poorly judged, though we work as hard as ye and labour by your sides without complaint, you kado who took our meadows and our...” shouted Tyn Lorl.

A cast stone silenced Tyn Lorl. He collapsed to the cobbles. Katriona ran to his side.

“See! She shows where her loyalty lies!” cried the demagogue. He had stepped off his box and was shoving at his fellows as he exhorted them, approaching a frenzy. “So disconnected are these rich ones that they cannot tell who their own people are!”

“My great-grandfather’s father was a simple man, my station is all bought with honest sweat and toil, as yours could also be!” she said.

The crowd laughed. Etwen shook his head. “You know nothing, nothing at all.”

“These things talk of slavery, we will show you real slavery!” crowed the demagogue.

Hands reached for her. They raked at her clothes, tearing them.

Etwen was at her side. “Steady with her! Steady!”

“Let me go, let me go!” A great terror gripped her. She was certain she was about to be killed, or worse. “Don’t you see? Stop this now, go home or they will kill you all!”

Her arms and legs were tugged mercilessly, but she remained unmolested. The demagogue exhorted his colleagues to stand firm, to not listen.

A horn blared, then another, then another. Shouts came from the gate. Katriona twisted around to see her guards scatter like sheep before wild dogs.

Colonel Alanrys came forward from the smoke blowing across Morthrocksey mainstreet. He wore his dress uniform, darkest red with golden frogging, a bicorn atop his head. Dracon feathers fluttered all along its crest, and he wore a cloak made of the same. He rode upon a silver-grey dracon shod for war. The mouth was unmuzzled. Steel blades covered its sickle claws, its forearms had been fitted with clawed gauntlets. The steel of its weapons clicked on the cobbles as Alanrys trotted to a halt in front of the crowd. Fifty of his men filed through the gates into the wide street, followed by fifty more, their arms and armour bronze in the light of the burning factories. They spread out in a double line, the plumes of their helmets twisted in the heat of the blaze. Their mounts were all as their leader’s, decked for battle, not the suppression of civil disobedience.

Alanrys raised an arm. One hundred carbines levelled at the crowd.

“Leave her!” ordered Alanrys. Hammers clicked back on guns.

The rioters backed away, leaving Katriona dishevelled in a shallow semicircle. Alanrys rode up, entirely unconcerned by the mob, his dracon prancing. “Well well well, Katriona Kressinda-Morthrocksa.” Alanrys leaned over in his saddle. He ignored the workers. “Here you are, disporting with the lower orders. How very you. You should have married me when you had the chance. You would not have found yourself in such poor company.” He surveyed the workers. Makeshift weapons shifted in hands. They had fallen silent, but their demeanour was defiant.

Katriona got to her feet. “Listen to me, Alanrys, stand your men down. It doesn’t have to end this way.”

“Rioting and the destruction of crown-licensed property are crimes of the highest order!” Bellowed Alanrys. His words were clipped, rich, projected to the very back of the crowd. “You will disperse or I will run you down. I swear this as Lord Defender of Karsa City, appointed by Prince Alfra himself!”

The line of workers bowed backward, uncertain.

“Alanrys! Listen, this is all a misunderstanding. A mistake. I am sure if I were to negotiate with them, to hear their grievances, then this will all be resolved without bloodshed.”

Alanrys sniffed. He took in the burning factory, the second whose windows vented smoke prodigiously. “A mistake? A burning mill, a riot, you, a goodlady, manhandled. It is you who are mistaken. This is sedition.”

She grabbed at his boot. “Please! If you ever had any feeling for me, do not spill their blood.” She glanced over her shoulder, searching out the demagogue. “There are agents at work here. This is not their doing.”

He looked down at her contemptuously, and she knew then she had made a mistake in appealing to his better side. “Feeling? I never had any feeling for you, Katriona. I merely wished to have you, and your father’s money along with you. As you were unwilling to be had, so I remain poorer than I should. I am not inclined to listen to you.” He swept his gaze across the crowd. “Let this scum crawl back to their hovels. They will know their place, or by all the driven gods I will put them in it, and the rest into the hands of the Guiders!” He shoved Katriona away, and rode back to the line of his men. They stared out impassively from under tall helmets. With anguish she understood that had Rel not been sent away, he would be there among them.