The Magic Engineer (34 page)

“He’s getting totally insufferable.” Anya takes a deep swallow.

“Getting?” Sterol’s fingers touch the edge of the screeing glass.

“All right. He’s always been arrogant. It’s just bothering me more now.” Anya finishes the wine with a full swallow. “He flaunts his power. He said he’ll bring down Axalt singlehand
edly. But not until the spring.”

Sterol represses a smile. “Do you think he can?”

She refills her glass. “Of course. Whether it’s wise is another question.”

Sterol walks over to the dining table, where he fills his own glass. “I take it that he’s continuing to hide his plans from you.”

“If he has any.”

“Sarcasm that blunt doesn’t become you. Jeslek has great plans.”

“He’s concerned—not quite worried—about something in Spidlar. Something to do with the Blacks. He’s stewed about it all spring and summer.”

“He’s told you this?”

“Of course not. But I can sense hints of it.”

“What has Fydel told you?”

“You obviously know.” Anya sips from the second glass more slowly.

“Why would Jeslek worry about letters from a poor trader in Jellico? So there must be something in the ironworker that isn’t obvious.”

“You are so brilliant, Sterol.”

“The same Jeslek who would smash a city is tiptoeing around a mere youngster. So who is the youngster?”

“He’s from Recluce,” Anya says, conceding nothing the older man does not already know.

“Does that matter, really?”

“It must, mustn’t it?” She smiles crookedly.

“You know, Anya,” sighs Sterol, “you aren’t nearly so clever as you think. Neither is Fydel. Jeslek may be insufferable, but he’s far from stupid. Neither am I. You don’t want to be High Wizard because you think whoever is will fail in any confrontation with Recluce. So you want to be second behind whichever of us is in control.”

“And if I do?”

“That’s dangerous, too. Not so obviously.” Sterol shrugs. “In any case, if Jeslek is worried about this smith…he bears watching.”

“Are you telling me that just because this…ironworker…has powerful parents across the ocean, Jeslek is being more
careful of him than…?”

“Than you? That’s exactly what I’m saying. If I were Jeslek, I’d try something indirect, or have the young man perish in the fall of Spidlar, but not before. Why risk getting Recluce involved earlier than necessary?”

“It’s not a risk.”

“Anya, dear, anything is a risk. Best you remember that.” Sterol sips from his glass, before responding to the knock on the door. “I believe supper has arrived.”

“It’s about time.”

“Come on, girl.” Dorrin urges Meriwhen forward, and the harness tightens as the ropes thread through the pulleys and the last of the four frame sections rises into place.

Although the morning is yet cool, with the sun low in the east, his work shirt is stained with sweat, and an occasional fly buzzes toward him. With deft movements, he brushes a back a horsefly, clamps the lines in place, and checks the antique-style crane before releasing the harness tension. Then he walks to the northern post and eases one of the two side stones into place in the hole, then the other. The keyed stones follow. Once the four stones are locked tight in place, he begins to shovel the clay around the outside. After several shovelfuls, he takes the heavy short limb he is using as a tamper and compacts the clay. Then he repeats the process with the other post. With this, all four posts, and the longitudinal beams holding each pair together, are held in place, but he cannot count on their continued stability until born cross beams are raised, and lowered into position.

Raising the cross beam will be tricky. First he must stand on the short triangular ladder to undo the leather cradle, then reposition the crane and fasten the cradle around the shorter beam. After loosening the leather and ropes, Dorrin readjusts his makeshift crane and Meriwhen.

“Let’s go, girl.”

Whufffff…

“I know. I know. You’re for riding, not lifting and hauling.
But lifting and hauling is what we need to do.”

Finally, the cross beam hangs precariously in the air, just above the brackets and notches that represent Dorrin’s fusion of woodwork and ironwork. Dorrin gets back on the ladder and guides one end into the bracket, loosely tying it down so that the far end is correspondingly higher. Then he eases up on the clamps to lower the beam until it almost touches the bracket top at the far end. Again he moves the ladder and readjusts the cross beam before releasing the clamps. The cross beam locks into place. He has another six cross beams to go before he can bracket the posts between them and the foundation sills.

With a deep breath, he repositions the ladder, undoes the leather cradle, and steps down. He moves Meriwhen, the crane, and the ropes and pulleys, and their anchors to the other end of the foundation, where he sets up for the same effort. After the main cross beams, he must do the smaller frame for the smithy that will stand at the south end of the structure.

It is well after midmorning, and the thunderclouds have begun to form, before the frame is locked in place. He sits down and drinks from the pitcher of water and chews a hunk off the loaf of bread. Despite the intermittent clouds, and the breeze, he is soaked with sweat. So far, he has a foundation and the basic frame for the building that—he hopes—will house him and Liedral.

He wipes his forehead. Then he takes the wheelbarrow and the smaller casks and trundles them over to the stream, where he fills the casks. After pushing the cask-filled wheelbarrow back, he adds the water to the mortar and begins to mix. Mixing the heavy substance by hand is tedious, and he stops a number of times before the cement feels right. With the wheelbarrow he has borrowed from Yarrl, he carts one load to the northern post, and pours and shovels the mortar in between the heavy stones bracing the post. He wheels the barrow back to the battered half-barrel he uses as a mixing tub and refills the barrow.

By noon, he has cemented in place all the posts, and bracketed the sill beams in position, along with most of the posts that fit between the cross beams and sill beams. Meriwhen is tied up and grazes by her recently completed stable, presumably glad that she is not lifting beams.

Actually, raising the frame of the main structure has been the
easy part. Designing, measuring, smithing, and assembling the frames and trusses has taken most of the eight-days since midsummer.

Dorrin sits on the front stoop and rests, thinking about the enormous amount of work yet to do before fall, and especially before the winter grips Diev…and all for a place that may be in jeopardy from the White Wizards even before it is truly finished.

Why is he doing it? Why does anyone do anything? There’s always a reason not to do something. After all, he reflects as he walks toward Rylla’s cottage, wiping the sweat that will not stop off his forehead, death is the result of life. So if you’ll die, why bother to live? Or do anything right?

He wonders what his father or Lortren would think—Dorrin considering solid work as a necessary protest against the futility of life and chaos.

He looks back at the clear structure of order he has raised on the ridge. Then he smiles and walks quickly toward the healer’s cottage and garden.

Dorrin surveys the small pool, noting the green scum around the edges. Above the pond, the water flows down the rocky ledge, clear and fresh, from the underground spring. His eyes turn from the rock face nearly twice his height down the browning hillside toward the ridge his framed house and stable share with Rylla’s smaller cottage. Even with the morning shadows, he can see the silver dew across the fall grasses.

The healer has insisted on having the Guild document her sale of the land to Dorrin. “What would ye do if lightning struck me dead?” she had asked. “A dead person doesn’t keep good faith.”

“You won’t die,” Dorrin had protested.

“We all die. Now get that worthless Hasten out here and seal this.”

Hasten had come, bowing and scraping the whole time.

Dorrin looks back at the near-stagnant pool and laughs
softly, ruefully, thinking of how the gray-haired Guild functionary fears a mere healer and sometime smith, as if Dorrin were anything more than a toymaker with dreams. After all, that is all he is. And his head does not ache at the thought.

Whhnnnnn…

He swats at the mosquito—and misses. The insects must be hungry to be so active so early in the day. A swarm of the insects gathers around him, so many that his attempts to ward them away are nearly useless. He swats another, pulping it on his neck, and getting his own blood on his fingers. He shakes his head, then takes a deep breath, still trying to wave off the hungry insects, before placing a powder-filled tube in the muddy bank over which the water flows into the winding trickle that feeds the pond below their houses.

After striking the fuse, he retreats past yellowing oak saplings and behind the flaking and crumbling stump of an oak cut for timber years earlier.

Crummmpppp…

The charge creates enough of a hole in the bank that the small pond begins to drain immediately. Dorrin picks up his shovel and begins scooping out the muck. Once he cleans out the area, he will divert the water while he installs the stone catch basin and the piping that will lead to his water tank. There is no reason why he cannot have running water in his kitchen, even if it will be cold, but he will have to ensure that the piping and the spring are deep enough not to freeze.

He continues to dig and swat until it is time for a late breakfast—except that it would have been the time he once ate a normal breakfast not too many years before in Extina. How things can change in such a short while!

Using the cold water from the spring, he strips to his waist and washes up as well as he can, still avoiding the mosquitoes, and carries his shovel and work shirt as he trudges through the bushes and low growth back downhill.

He wishes he could do more, but he needs to gather another assortment of spices and deliver them to Vyrnil, not to mention checking with Rylla to see if she needs him for any of those who may come for her services. Some of the early corn is already being harvested, and there are always harvest injuries.

He glances back uphill at the spring. Will he ever be able to
put all the pieces together? The house and workroom are framed and roofed and even glazed, and the plasterer has finished. But outside of the forge, a stove he has built himself, and a bed, a table, and two chairs, he has no furniture.

He stops beside the stable; he has not fed Meriwhen. Setting the shovel back in the barn and draping his damp shirt over the stall wall, he fills her manger with hay. Then he levers the top off the grain barrel and uses the wooden scoop to fill the smaller section of the manger.

Whuffff…

“I know. I was late this morning. Better late than never.” Dorrin looks at the water barrel, still a third full. He can refill that later.

He still has to gather the spices, bundle and package them and write out the labels for the trader—and get to Rylla’s. He closes the stall, picks up his shirt, and heads toward the nearly empty house.

After leaving his boots on the small covered porch, he steps into the kitchen, glancing at the papers by the box on the corner of the table. He picks up the letter, frowning again at the signs of tampering. Why are the Whites so interested in Liedral’s letters—and presumably his to her?

His eyes skip down the page.

His own letter—carefully set in the top of the writing box—is not finished, not with the care he must take in writing some
thing that is clearly being read.

Why are the White Wizards so interested in a lady trader and a toymaker and smith? Even if he could make his machines, and his steam engine, he certainly cannot make very many. And even if he does, neither Fairhaven nor Recluce want them…so who would use them besides himself?

He looks out the window toward the healer’s. Wool gathering will not get the herbs gathered and bundled, or the harvest injuries treated and healed. Or the iron work waiting at Yarrl’s done.

The white mists swirl away and reveal the fall brown grasses of the upland meadows somewhere north of Fenard and south of Elparta. In the center of the mirror, a trader’s wagon plods southward. A red-haired woman drives the wagon, and a thin dark man rides beside.

Over the top of the hill waits another group, wearing the dark green tunics of Certis. As the wagon nears the hill crest, the riders fan and charge toward the two traders.

Just as quickly, the redhead halts the wagon, and two men with bows throw off brown cloths, aiming their arrows at the charging raiders. A pair of swords appears in the hands of the redhead, and from behind the raiders Spidlarian guards appear, led by a blond giant who strews bodies before him.

Not a single Certan raider survives. As the shovels appear for gravedigging, Jeslek waves his hand, and the image vanishes from the mirror. “Bah…no magic at all. Just good tactics and cleverness. No one survives; no bodies are found, and the rumor spreads that the Spidlarians are using magic.”

“It doesn’t exactly help to tell that to either the Viscount or the Prefect,” observes Anya from the chair by the window.

“Or to admit it took more than a season and magic to figure it out,” adds Fydel. “That’s hard when they claim to have lost nearly a hundred men over the last two seasons.”

“Do we know who is responsible?” asks the normally quiet
Cerryl. “Beyond the obvious?” He gestures toward the blank mirror.

“Our…sources in Spidlar would indicate that most of the damage has been caused by one squad formed for this purpose last spring. Supposedly, the squad leader and assistant are outcasts from Recluce.”

“Supposedly? That’s rich! They exile two people, and those two people just happen to be in the right spot to block everything. Do you really believe that, Jeslek?” asks Fydel.

Jeslek does not correct Fydel’s mathematics. “I said supposedly.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“Now…nothing.” He holds up a hand to forestall objections. “I’m not playing Jenred’s waiting game. But do any of you really want a winter war?”

Headshakes cross the tower room.

“Once the roads clear in spring, I will personally direct our forces in the invasion of Spidlar. Over the winter, we should step up efforts to close off as much trade as possible—and, as possible, minimize the impact of Recluce’s meddling.” He smiles at Fydel. “We need to make it a hard winter indeed in Spidlar.”

“Spidlar isn’t the real enemy; Recluce is,” reminds Fydel.

“You and I know who the real enemies are.” Jeslek smiles with his mouth. “And their time will come.”

“So clever, and so cryptic,” murmurs Anya under her breath.

Jeslek’s eyes fall on her, and her lips are silent. His eyes glitter, and she shivers. Fydel swallows, and Cerryl looks out the tower window.