Maker of Fire

Tom, Gangkego, Cold Season, 6th rot., 5th day.

I woke up to an empty bed. When I dressed and made inquiries, I discovered Emily had left for an early morning walk just after dawn. Knowing her as I did, that meant she was bothered by something. She liked to walk while she worked out her problems in her head. She wasn't someone who could stay still. Frankly, trying to keep up with her exhausted me at times, at least back on Earth. Her midnight stroll in Is'syal after Vassu visited her in her sleep argued that she hadn't changed.

The staff at House Urssi was first rate. Without being told, the front porter sent two of the serving staff to follow Emily. By the time I sat down for the morning meal, one of them returned with the news that she was strolling the beach, looking at shells and skipping stones on the water. I finished my grub, grabbed some pastries for Em, and headed for the beach.

I didn't spot her on the beach. Then one of the staff members from House Urssi found me and pointed me to the city pier. I found my Emily sitting at the end of the pier, staring out at the ocean, with a red nose and eyes from weeping. She didn't even look up at me when I sat down next to her.

"You snuck out again without waking me," I said in a neutral tone of voice.

"You were sleeping so peacefully. I didn't want to disturb your sleep," Emily mumbled.

I put my arm around her, "More bad dreams?"

"Yeah," she still hadn't looked up.

"More visits from gods?" I fished.

"Yeah," she grimaced and closed her eyes. Then she blotted the tears she didn't want me to see on the back of her mittens.

"Old bad news or new bad news?" I prodded. She would clam up if I didn't draw her out.

"New bad news," she sighed and looked like she had just lost her best friend. "I got my first preview of what the gods want from me after the revelation of Landa. I was looking forward to getting my life back but that's not going to happen."

"What do the gods want now?"

"They want me to write a book that will become scripture. The book will argue that the Coyn must be ruled by Cosm. I think I'd rather put an arrow through my foot or maybe leap off a cliff without a hang glider. Drinking myself to death has some appeal. My body weight is low enough that alcohol poisoning would probably be easy."

"Emily, I worry when you talk like that," I pulled her toward me and leaned my head on her shoulder. "I just found you again. I don't think I could bear it if I lost you."

She leaned her head against mine, "I need to start shopping for bricks." Emily sounded weary. "It sounds like all the brick kilns are inland from here. We should borrow some horses from House Urssi and head up the river."

"At morning repast, Dalmatti said the council might fund the three ships if you showed local artificers how to make iron and steel," I related.

"How did Twee react to that?" Emily was curious. "The goofball gods want me to teach iron-making everywhere eventually.

"Twee thought it was a good deal," I replied.

"Is it? You know I'm not the one who should make any business deals. It's weird getting a perk for something I intended to do anyway eventually."

"I think it's a good deal too," I squeezed her shoulder. "It's bad enough that the Cosm have a monopoly on magic. I don't think it's good for them to get a monopoly on iron and steel too."

"Spreading iron elsewhere too fast could make it harder and deadlier for Foskos to take control of the continent."

"Then negotiate with the Sea Coyn not t0 trade iron to places outside of Foskan control," I suggested. "If the divine plans work out, then Foskos will have control within a decade, so the Sea Coyn just need to be patient with regards to trade. In the meantime, they still get to use it internally, and maybe even trade iron with Foskos. The Foskans are their largest trading partner."

"Foskos doesn't need to trade iron with anyone," Emily pointed out. "Alright, if the Ruling Council of Five will agree to an embargo on trading iron and steel outside of Foskos, then I will agree to this." She was sounding less depressed.

I decided to risk a direct attack on what had bummed her out. "Em, it's just a book, right? That the gods want you to write? That's not so bad. It's not like destroying a city or taking an entire peaceful race to war against the Cosm. It's not like walking home on infected feet with a wound fever or getting kicked by a silverhair priestess. You can do it in your spare time around homesteading or raising kids or teaching at the Building Shrine, if that's what you want to do. You know lots of people will help you."

"It means I can't disengage," Emily grimaced. "I can't walk away to live my own life after the revelation of Landa. I have to stay stuck in this damn prophet role that I hate. I can't go back to being just me."

I had to sigh. She didn't want to acknowledge the truth that was right in front of her. "Emily, love, that 'just me' person disappeared more than a year ago. You aren't that person anymore and your haven't been for a while now. You may think you want to go back to that life, but I would talk you out of it. You stayed alive but just barely. You suffered out there, whether or not you want to admit it. Every single rib I feel when I hold you tells me just how badly you suffered."

"I disagree," she growled, not wanting to face facts.

"You rattled off an dissertation on Foskan justice at the trial in Turvos and forced the King of Cosm monster mages to revise the law," I pointed out. "That's not the act of a simple homesteading Coyn in the wilderness. The Emily I knew on Earth could never have done something like that. Your scripture of the trial was not the act of the timid little mouse I married, who always wanted to hide in the shadows. I know you certainly changed in the fifty years on Earth after I died. Here on Erdos, you had to change some more just to survive, and then you had to change some to fill this prophet role. You can't undo any of that."

"Damn gods," Emily grumbled. Her state of funk was going strong.

"Writing a book of scripture isn't all that horrible, Em," I wheedled. "Do a page a day and it will be done in a year or two."

"You forget the pleasant subject of that book, to convince other Coyn to stay under the heel of the Cosm," she glared at the water surface below her dangling feet. "What joy that will be be. Somebody shoot me, please."

"I think there's a grumpy puss on this dock that needs to be sweetened up," I pulled out a fabric-wrapped pastry from my inside my coat. "The pastries at morning repast had bits of bacon and apple baked in, with a sweet syrup made from wheat sprouts on top. These folks also understand the art of making a flaky buttery sweet pastry dough."

"Gimmee that," Emily tried to grab it from me.

I held the pastry out of reach of her shorter arms. "I could give it to you if you kissed me," I tried to bribe her.

"I could push you off this pier into the water if you don't give me that pastry, and all the ones you have hidden in your coat too," she threatened. She knew me too well.

It was never safe to assume that Emily was bluffing. I gave her the pastries.

Emily, Gangkego, Cold Season, 6th rot., 5th day

I noticed that the Sea Coyn had a soft spot toward Twee. I'm not sure why but they bargained nicer with Twee than with Tom. Maybe it was because of Inkalem's exclusive trade treaty with the Chem. Tom and I didn't have any sugar to trade while the Chem had a monopoly on sugar cane, which only grew in Sussbesschem.

Regardless of the reason for favoring Twee, the three of us decided to have him do all the haggling with the Council of Five. Besides, Twee was good at bargaining. He was also happy to take charge. This was his big quest, after all. I was along for the ride because Vassu asked me to help. Otherwise, I'd be happy to stay at home and make plans for when Foskos freed its Coyn.

Twee set up a bloomery on a brick foundation in the sand of the beach. He opted for natural venting, which I thought was inefficient. Twee remarked that I favored overengineering my projects. He opined that natural venting through the sand and air holes at the base of the cob bloomery would prevent accidental pig iron production by limiting the draft. I thought he'd be making a less iron from his charge.

We had quite a crowd on the beach. I think every bronze worker and tin smith in the city showed up to Twee's bloomery and forge refining demonstration. Twee and Tom did all the work. I got to sit in a chair between Danasma and her mother in the front row to watch.

Twee and Tom started a half a bell past dawn and finished a bell before dusk. The two had spent the previous day building a forge next to the bloomery site. House Urssi lent us large pair of box bellows on a stand that usually lived at a stannary.

Twee started with a five stone charge of magnetite sand, which he and Tom collected by dragging magnets through the beach sand the day before they built the forge. Twee finished by forge refining his bloom into a wrought iron ingot and then making a small knife with a work-hardened edge. He used a thick slab of cast bronze as his anvil.

The attendees gathered in the banquet room at House Urssi the next morning for a question and answer session. One wit of a bronze caster wanted to know what the advantage was to iron and steel. "This little furnace and forge refining for iron is a big step-up in effort. Once the copper and tin are smelted, we make the bronze alloy and then cast our shapes. It's a lot quicker and far less work. From looking at the iron knife made yesterday, it's not better or worse than bronze. So why bother?"

"What the Blessed Twee showed you yesterday was wrought iron," I explained, speaking at length to the crowd for the first time. "That's just one variation of what you can make with iron. There are two other basic forms that we can make: cast iron and steel. Of the two, steel can be made very hard but still elastic. Compared to well-made bronze tools and weapons, most of what you can do with iron can be done with bronze.

"The real difference comes from availability. The advantage of iron is that there's a lot more of it than tin. After four millennia, Erdos is running out of tin. At the current rate of consumption, all of the easily-mined tin deposits will be depleted. When there is no more cheap tin, there will be no more cheap bronze. Everyone on Erdos, in every country, will need to switch to iron as the main metal for making goods in bulk before the last of the big tin deposits runs out."

"When will that be?" a woman in the back of the crowd asked.

"Within a hundred years," I replied.

"How do you know that?"

"The gods told me," I answered truthfully.

"You expect us to believe that?"

"I won't give you a fart for what you want to believe," I snipped. "I'm here only because the gods decided to use me as a spokesperson for them. I don't like it and I'm not happy about it. I'd much rather be at my home doing my trade as an artificer. If you don't want to take my word for how the gods have screwed up my life, then ask the Cosm High Priestess Moxsef of the Shrouded Shrine of Vassu in Weirdos.

"I know that shrine provides the Temple of Vassu here in Gangkego with all of its scriptural materials and that the High Priestess communicates with the Chief Hand here. The gods modified my aura in ways that some silverhairs can detect. That is good enough for them to grant me real authority in Foskos. The only thing any Coyn can see is my eyes. The cat god gave me his reflective yellow eyes that can see in the dark. My eyes used to be brown."

"I can vouch for that," Danasma spoke up. "I knew Emily back when she traded with us at Uldlip. Her eyes used to be brown and now they are different as she described. Usruldes Utkin was there when the god Galt changed Emily's eyes. He witnessed it and I believe his account of how it happened. Along with the appearance of Vassu in the Temple five days ago, the shrines in Foskos acknowledge Emily as a prophet as do the three refugee high priestesses from Impotu, one of whom I met at the home of Ud a few days ago. Emily is a real prophet, and the first prophet and revelator to be a Coyn. If Emily says the gods told her about tin becoming scarce, then I believe her."

Wow. I had no idea that Danasma would come to my defense like that. It was a good thing too since Tom was beginning to look riled over that woman in the back of the crowd heckling me.

"Ssssss am a ssshaman of my tribe in Sssussbesschem," Twee suddenly spoke up, hissing more than usual as he inflated the air bladder for speaking for those of us limited to breathing just air. "I can sssee the blessing of Vassu upon Emily. She has indeed been touched by our Mistresss of the Watersss. I believe her when she saysss she speaksss for the godsss."

The rest of the questions were about building bloomeries. Because of those questions, I decided the next morning to build a forced-draft single-tuyere bloomery like the one I made at Omexkel last year. I built my bloomery while Tom and Twee built a cupola furnace as tall as Twee could balance on his tail, which was about ten hands high. The interior was fire brick smeared with a kaolinite grout and the exterior was red brick.

We had bonfires going so the brickwork would set. It didn't matter that much for the bloomeries, since you build those and fire them immediately below the water in the cob has time to freeze. Mineral cements, on the other hand, don't do well in freezing temperatures without 21st century Earth additives.

When the boys were done playing with bricks, we attached the bellows to a clay pipe that went to the air hole on the new bloomery. Using a five stone charge, and Tom as the bellows operator, I demonstrated to a smaller crowd of metal workers the two different ways to screw up and make pig iron instead: using too much initial charge and providing too much draft. We were brilliantly successful, especially because of the superior charcoal provided by the Ruling Council of Five for the furnaces.

Four days later, after giving the mortar time to cure enough to sustain a furnace run, we used the cupola furnace to melt the pig iron mixed with powdered charcoal to make cast iron axe heads.

I couldn't complain about the time spent. While Tom, Twee, and I set up and demonstrated making basic wrought and cast iron, the Ruling Council arranged to have our three long boats loaded with our cargo for the four rotation trip down the coast to the vast swamp of Sussbesschem. We left immediately after we cast our five axe heads with the molten metal in the cupola furnace.

The biggest logistical difficulty with sailing to Sussbesschem was keeping Twee warm. Imstay King made Twee a bag full of 30 charm gems already set-up to warm the insides of Twee's rubber suit. Each would keep the inside of the suit warm for a day. I hoped that we could get to warmer weather before Twee used up all the gems.

The Sea Coyn built a little shack toward the rear of the one of the ships for Twee. It was shingled on the outside and lined with sheepskins on the inside. Twee was the only person who got his own shelter. The rest of us lived and slept out in the open since the ships were low in the water with just one huge mast and sail on each boat. The ships also had rowing benches for when the wind wasn't favorable. The crews were practiced at getting a pitched awning up over the rowing benches and over the tiller platforms, so we never got too wet when it rained.

Poor Tom. He got seasick, which surprised me. He was as green as his eyes and heaving for the first four days after we left Gangkego. After that, he acclimated.

The trip hugged the shore until we reached the swamps of Sussbesschem. The ships' pilots used primitive compasses and detailed charts. The sailors threw a log overboard attached to a rope to measure ship speed. The rope had markings on it. Paying out the rope stopped when a bucket timer filled. The marking when it was stopped corresponded to velocity on a scale that had no equivalent in Foskan measures. The scale was unique to the Sea Coyn.

Whenever signs of a storm appeared, all three boats would head for the nearest river mouth or beach. We waiting out five Cold Season storms, costing us twelve days of travel.