Storm Rising (10 page)

“Don’t go too far overboard,” Natoli warned. “There’re problems with steampower that we really ought to consider before we have people riding all over in steam-driven carriages. You have to burn things to heat water, and that makes smoke, and what happens when we start putting more smoke in the air? There’s already a soot problem in Haven from all the heating and cooking fires.”

“But you won’t need heating and cooking fires if we heat everyone’s house with the hot waste water from the steam-driven mills and manufactories,” the other argued. “In fact, we should eliminate most of the soot problem that way.”

“Not if you replace every one of those cookfires with one heating the boiler in a steam carriage,” someone else put in. “Natoli’s right about that. We really need to think about what we’re doing before we launch into something we can’t stop.”

“Wait a moment,” Karal interrupted. “Steam
carriages?”

“One of the Masters came up with a water pump for draining mines that was steam driven, and someone else realized that the same principle could be used as the motive power for a carriage, by basically adding
wheels to the whole affair rather than having a stationary boiler,” Natoli explained. She snatched a stick of charcoal out of someone else’s hand and began to draw on the paper covering the table in front of them. “You see—here’s the boiler, in front of the firebox; pressure builds up in here and you vent it into the cylinder—the piston gets driven back—that turns a wheel—”

As she sketched, Karal began to see what she was talking about. “But why steam carriages at all?” he asked. “Aren’t horses good enough?”

Natoli’s eyes sparkled, and he realized he had uncovered her secret passion. “But these go
faster
than horses, Karal,” she said. “They never get tired, they can pull more than horses can without hurting themselves, and the only time they have to stop is when they run out of fuel or water.”

“Huh.” He could think of places where that would be useful. In the mountains, where the roads were cruelly hard on carthorses. Or any time you needed to send something very quickly somewhere. Supplies, perhaps, or soldiers. Of course these things would be limited to places where the roads were good, which was quite a limitation, when you thought about it. Using them on a regular basis meant that the roads would have to be improved and kept in repair, and that could get rather expensive….

“We’re thinking about putting them on rails or in grooved tracks,” Natoli continued, waving a sausage roll in one hand as she spoke. “Like the coke carts at the big iron-smelting works. The only problem is that takes a lot of metal, so where do we get all that metal? And if you used cut stone, it would wear out rapidly from the wheels. Every time you solve a problem you bring up twenty more.” But she didn’t look particularly discouraged. “The point is, we know we can use large versions of this in places where windmills don’t work and there isn’t any water for water mills. We can use the waste heat to heat houses, or even the Palace. Wouldn’t
that
be a sight!”

“Wouldn’t it be a sight as you get in everyone’s way digging up the Palace and grounds to lay all your
pipe,” An’desha pointed out sardonically. He pushed a fall of his long hair back from his forehead, showing his pale eyes crinkled in smile lines. “I can’t see the Queen holding still for that! Especially not in the foreseeable future.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean right now,” Natoli said airily, waving her hands in the air. “I just meant eventually. After all, it’s not as if it hasn’t been done. Think of the mess it made when all the new indoor privies and the hot and cold water supplies were put in. That was in the first couple of years of Selenay’s reign, and I don’t hear anyone complaining about it now!”

“A point,” An’desha acknowledged. “I’d like to see you folk find some other source of heat than a fire, however. Fires are not very clean.”

“Some magical source, maybe?” Karal said without thinking, and blushed when every eye on the table turned toward him. “I don’t really know what I’m talking about, I’m just speculating—” he stammered. “Don’t pay any attention to me, I’m just babbling.”

“But your babbling makes some sense,” Natoli responded, her eyes lighting up with enthusiasm. “A practical application of magic! That might be the answer to my chief objection as well.”

The talk turned to possible magical sources of heat then, and An’desha held center stage as he speculated on how this might be accomplished in such a way that the mage would not actually have to be there to make the source work. It led into talk of binding magical creatures, small ones that thrived on fuel of one kind or another, and it was clear to Karal that An’desha was in his element. Karal was able to watch Natoli to his heart’s content, as her face grew animated during the heat of the discussion, and she tossed her hair with impatience or excitement.

“So,” An’desha said, as the door of the Compass Rose closed behind them, shutting off part of the noise, which had not in the least abated. “Feeling rested and relaxed?”

Karal paused and took stock of himself and blinked in surprise. “Why—yes!”

An’desha laughed. “Good. That was what I hoped would happen. Now are you wondering why I pulled you away after Natoli left?” He started off down the street at a fast walk, and Karal followed.

“A little,” he admitted, sniffing in the cold and damp, “Though I must admit once she left I got a bit bored when they all started talking about mathematics and drawing on the tables again.”

“Because you and I are going to go to the
ekele
. Firesong is up to his eyebrows in some discussion involving the Tayledras, the Shin’a’ in, and k’Leshya at Haven, so he won’t be there.
I’m
not taking part because I’ve been told I’m not Shin’a’ in enough to satisfy the envoy. He doesn’t like halfbreeds.”

“Hmph, I’m not surprised. He seems to dislike all sorts of people,” Karal growled. “Well, I don’t like
him
, so we’re all even.”

Karal walked on in silence, seeming lost in thought, then turned to An’desha. “What did you have in mind when we get there?”

“You are going to soak in the hot spring, and you are going to have a nice, relaxing cup of Shin’a’ in tea, and then you are going to go to your suite and sleep.” It was too dark to read An’desha’s face, but his voice told Karal he was not going to be argued with. “As I recall, you made the same prescription for me a time or two, and turnabout is fair play.”

“So is that why you have turned into my counselor?” Karal asked, and he wasn’t entirely being facetious. The events of this afternoon and evening had proved to him that An’desha had achieved an inner peace that he found enviable.

If only I could be so sure of things again!

“The turnabout? Oh, it is a part of it,” An’desha said, with serene warmth in his voice. “You have done good things for me, with good reason and without. You have been kind when you could have been neutral. There is a saying from the Plains:
Every gift carries the hope for an exchange.”

Karal mulled that over, but his thoughts about the Shin’a’ in proverb were eclipsed by marveling over An’desha’s calm.

That was part of the problem he had with the entire situation. He was not only acting as envoy, but as a priest—and a priest should be utterly sure of himself and his beliefs. Either a priest or an envoy should be sure and calm.

But he was being required to determine what was heresy for those of his faith here in Valdemar, and
that
was where his beliefs were collapsing around his ears. How could he make a judgment on what was heretical, when he had seen evidence with his own eyes that what he “knew” was the Truth was only truth in a relative sense?

Take the very existence of An’desha’s Star-Eyed Goddess, for instance. For a Sun-priest, there was
one
God, and one only, and that was Vkandis—yet he had ample proof that was beyond refutation that the Star-Eyed existed and ruled Her people right alongside Vkandis Sunlord.

To even think that was rankest heresy by the standards of the Faith as he was taught it. But he had been taught
the old ways
and things had changed drastically since.

He’d already deferred the decision once, which had only made both parties angry at
him
. He suspected that this was the reason why he was being confronted by all the heads of religion in Valdemar. They weren’t going to accept a deferred decision again.

Perhaps in his new-found confidence and serenity, An’desha could act as
his
adviser as he had once acted as An’desha’s.

“Would you mind listening to a problem of mine?” he asked, as they walked side-by-side up the deserted street, toward the Palace.

“You listened to mine often enough,” An’desha replied. “It only seems fair. I won’t promise an answer, but maybe I can help anyway.”

He explained the predicament he was in; his own uncertainty, and his unwillingness to label
anything
heresy. “I don’t know now if there
is
a wrong or right, in anything. And I am put in the position of being the person that is supposed to know! It all seems so relative now,” he ended plaintively.

But An’desha only chuckled. “If I were to turn and stick my knife in you now,
that
wouldn’t be ‘relatively’ good or bad, would it?”

He had to laugh. “Hardly!”

“Work from that, then,” An’desha suggested. “You’ve
been
reading all those old books that Master Ulrich brought with him, the ones written back before the Sunlord’s priesthood went wrong. You have a fair idea what was considered heretical then, don’t you? And what’s more, since you have those books, and since Solaris approves of them, you can cite sources to
prove
the position you’re taking, right?”

Fog rose from the damp cobblestones all around them, but it seemed that the fog in his own mind was lifting. “Well, yes, literally chapter and verse. That’s true,” he said slowly. “I think the problem is that I know what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t think of a way to make it stick.”

“You probably still won’t be able to make it stick,” An’desha warned. “The people you’re dealing with are like that new Shin’a’ in envoy that replaced Querna; hidebound and dead certain they’re right.”

“True, but if they don’t like
my
decision, I can tell them to appeal to Solaris, and as long as I follow what Master Ulrich was trying to show me, I think she’ll back me.” His cheer was mounting by the moment. “I don’t much care if they don’t like me afterward. There are so many people in Valdemar now who don’t like me that a few more won’t matter.”

“That’s the spirit!” An’desha applauded. “Good for you.
Now
are you ready for that soak?”

“I’m soaked in trouble anyway, why not add hot water?”

“Careful with that kind of talk,” An’desha grinned.

“You’ll make it start raining again.”

*   *   *

Karal’s backide and face were both numb. His shoulders ached; he maintained an expression of calm interest, but inside, he was yawning.
All we do is talk!
he thought, taking a covert glance around the Grand Council table, and seeing nothing but the same expressions of stolid self-importance he had seen for days.
We never actually do anything, we just talk about it!

The Valdemaran “Grand Council” was new; an institution formed so that Queen Selenay could attend to the problems that were strictly internal to Valdemar in a forum where every envoy, Guild functionary, Master artificer, and their collective secretaries did not feel urged to put in their
own
bits of advice. She had been getting nothing done, and every busybody in her kingdom had been privy to Valdemar’s internal problems. The old Council Chamber had gone back to the use for which it had been built, and one of the larger rooms in the Palace, formerly a secondary Audience Chamber for the reception of large parties, had been turned over to the new function.

Of course, everyone involved had his own ideas on protocol, which meant that the Queen and her advisers had to come up with some seating arrangement that would suit everyone. A new table had been constructed in the form of a hollow square with one side open, like an angular horse shoe. Around it were placed enough seats for everyone who might conceivably want to have a hand in the situation with the Empire, the mage-storms, or both. The table sat squarely in the middle of the otherwise empty room, and on the platform that had once been the dais was a huge strategic map of Valdemar, Hardorn, Karse, Rethwellan, the Tayledras lands to the west, the Dhorisha Plains, and south as far as Ceejay. The gryphons, when they attended, actually sat (or rather, lounged) in the hollow interior of the table, with the rest spaced evenly along the outside. No one sat at the “head” of the table, for there was no head or foot, and so everyone could feel he was equal, superior, or whatever his pride demanded.

Although the room was well-provided with lights, both along the walls and from a chandelier hanging
from the ceiling, it was cold. Two ceramic-tiled stoves, one at either end of the room, had to make shift to heat the whole place. The white marble floor and white-painted walls and ceiling added to the impression of cold. Karal always dressed warmly for these meetings, and kept the pages busy refilling his cup of hot tea which he mostly used to warm his hands. Nor was he the only person to resort to such measures to keep warm; he noted that Firesong actually had the forethought to bring a handwarmer and a heated brick which he put inside a special footstool. He cast envious glances now and again at both, as he wriggled his toes in an attempt to keep them from turning into little blocks of ice.

Prince Daren acted as the Queen’s voice on the Grand Council, leaving Selenay free to rule her country and not sit in on meeting after endless meeting. Meetings at which, it seemed to Karal, very little was accomplished.

That’s not fair, actually
, Karal thought, looking around again.
No one has ever done anything like this before. We’re all having to come to terms with each other, and that takes time. We have to learn to work together before anything can happen
.