Maker of Fire

Emily, Healing Shrine, Planting Season, 5 rot., 8th day (continued from the previous installment)

Imstay and Lisaykos helped Aylem to her feet, looking at me with wary eyes. Kamagishi, still on her knees in front of me, reached out and brushed my cheek.

"I confess, you are frightening right now, Great One," Kamagishi said with a tremor in her voice. "When you left Black Falls, you had nine god marks. Now you have eleven, and they are most palpable when you are truly angered, which, thank the gods, doesn't happen often."

"I'm not a frivolous person, Holy One," I pressed her big paw of a hand between mine. "I may not always explain myself well, but I know how and what I want to accomplish. Please trust my judgment. Or trust Landa's. He told me more lives would be saved if I came to Aybhas. I had to come. I can't just let people die because I want to hide from the world in a safe place."

She reached out with her long arms, gathered me to her ample chest, and hugged me. "I don't always understand you, dear heart, but you have the most generous heart of anyone I know."

Lisaykos walked down to where we were, off to one side of the belfry. She knelt beside us. "Keep a hold of her, Sister," she said to Kamagishi. "Emily," she laid a light hand on my head as the tears cascaded down her cheeks, "I must impart sad news. Wolkayrs died in the fire with his entire family. He went running to the north market when the fires started to help salvage what they could save from the shop. He never returned. Thuorfosi felt him die. So did I. He is dead."

Being held by Kamagishi was fortunate because every muscle I had collapsed in shock. Then the grief hit, and all I did for several minutes was ball my eyes out.

While I wept, Lisaykos cleared the roof. The silverhairs had accompanied Aylem as she extinguished every fire in the city, followed by her charm of compulsion on all the city's Coyn. Now, they walked down the dome to the step stair on the north balcony.

"This is tragic," I heard Imstay say to someone as they walked away. "I thought I would be happy to discover the prophet had established solid ties to Foskos, but this is horrific."

Someone must have dropped a charm of sleep on me because the next thing I knew, I was tucked into my bed in a nightgown, with Fed'soas sitting on one of my chests doing her homework.

"I see they gave you nanny duty," I told Fed, who had gotten even bigger since I saw her in Truvos last year.

"Great One," she put her wax tablet and stylus down.

"What happened to calling me just Emily?"

"Grandmom is just three doors down, and she has really long ears," Fed said ruefully.

I had to laugh at her tone of voice.

"How do you feel, Emily?"

"Like one of my best friends just died," I said truthfully as the tears started up. "What time is it?"

"Half past the sixth bell," Fed replied, blotting tears from her own eyes. "Dinner is at the seventh bell, like always. Would you like me to heat up the water for the shower so you can freshen up? I've been instructed to help you with whatever you need." She handed me a handkerchief.

I took a hot shower. I let Fed do the back laces on the kirtle she picked out, and we both went to dinner. The meal was stew. Lisaykos, always a class act, had decided that there would be no special meals for dignitaries on the fourth floor. We all would eat the same food the rest of the shrine ate until the food supply situation was resolved.

At dinner, I learned that the food situation prompted the riot; however, it disturbed me that some rioters were equipped with my calcium phosphide bombs. That struck me as premeditation independent of a food riot. It took several days to make one of those bombs, and the rioters seemed to have an abundant supply of them. Something was not right here.

The riot started when the spoot slaves had their rations cut. They no longer had any work to do because of the switch to indoor plumbing, and Aybhas was the first city to completely convert due to Lisaykos' efforts. Because they were now idle, their owner, the Shrouded Shrine of Vassu, decided it could cut back on what they were eating. Less exertion meant the slaves could survive on less food.

"Food is already short," Imstay explained at the dinner table. "We lost half our harvest from the year before because of the flood, so we had no surplus going into last year. We lost last year's harvest from Yuxviayeth when the Impotuans burnt the fields. We lost a granary in Surdos in the riots back at the end of Harvest Season, after the harvest was in. We are low on the purple wet weed we stockpiled. Other vegetables are scarce, and we won't see any fresh ones for at least six rotations. Many slaves already have the hunger disease, so cutting rations sent the spoot slaves into the streets and toward the granaries at the river landing. We don't have a good timeline yet of what happened after that, but at some point before the fourth bell, those nasty little clay bombs started flying."

"So, you idled a large enslaved workforce and then cut what you were feeding them," I remarked. "I might have rioted too. What's hunger disease?"

"We see it in scarce food conditions at the beginning of the planting season," Aylem explained. "The disease will appear if food stores get depleted over the cold season with not enough to tide us over until warmer weather. Sufferers get weak. Their arms and legs will become painful. They develop red blotches, which may bleed. The gums bleed, and the teeth get loose. Hairs anywhere on the body can bleed at their roots. There is often bleeding under the fingernails. If given more food, some will still die despite being fed. That's the funny thing about hunger disease. Once it starts, food won't cure it. What's with the face, Great One?" Aylem looked at me.

"When you give food to hunger disease victims, what sort of food is it?" I asked, guessing at what the answer would be.

"Whatever is available before the new harvest starts," Aylem frowned.

"You just described scurvy, Great One," I concluded.

"Scurvy?" Aylem looked shocked.

"Fruits and vegetables supply vitamin C, and you run out of them first over the cold season," I replied. "You need to get some vitamin C into people."

"I remember vitamins being in the newspapers," Aylem said, frowning as she recalled her memories of her previous life. "Vitamin C? Wasn't it some Hungarian who discovered it? I remember he got a Nobel Prize for it just before I entered trade school."

"What are you two talking about?" Imstay insisted. "It makes me crazy when the two of you do this. What are scurvy and vitiminsea? Hungarians? Newspapers? Nobel Prizes?"

"This is more of that other world stuff, isn't it?" asked Moxsef, who had stayed in Aybhas since it was her shrine's slaves who had started the riot.

"Crap," Lisaykos dropped her head into her hands. "I just made a mindcast for Wolkayrs to bring his Emily notes so we could write this down." She blotted the tears away with her sleeve.

I couldn't hug her, but I reached over, put my hand on hers, and squeezed. The tears started again from my own eyes. It was silent in the dining room for several long moments. Imstay broke the melancholy atmosphere.

"Great One," Imstay addressed me, "How does one cure hunger disease? Where does this vitiminsea come from? What fruits and vegetables is it in? Can it be isolated as a potion and stockpiled as a medicine for future use?

"To be truthful, I do not know how to isolate it," I admitted.

"You don't?" Imstay looked surprised.

"You know, I don't know everything," I rolled my eyes.

"Is there any way to cure hunger disease with the foods left in storage?" he asked.

"If you have no fruits and vegetables left, you're out of luck, Imstay King," I answered, "though if I remember correctly, Foskans don't use rose hips at all. I recall seeing a lot of rose hips on wild rose bushes. They're around right up until the warm weather starts. There should still be some rose hips out there. Rose hips are a good source of vitamin C. You could try gathering those."

"Rose hips are only good for goats," Lord Katsa haup Gunndit interjected. "They have these hairs inside the fruit that scratch the tongue. No one will eat them other than goats."

"You can make a tea or syrup from rose hips," I told Katsa. "Squeeze the juice out of the fruits. Then you can strain the hairs out."

"I'll contact Ashansalt at the Bountiful Shrine," Aylem said. "This is her area of responsibility. She can send out folks to forage and train laborers on the holdings. She'll know the best way to process the fruits." She turned her head to look at me and mouthed, "You did it again, you boffin."

"I'll send my people out looking for rose hips," Lord Katsa volunteered. "I've seen some while we've been tapping our maple trees. The sap is still running at higher elevations, so my crews are still working in the forests. Have the Holy Ashansalt contact me since we can get something going in a day or two, assuming we can find enough wild rose plants. Lord Truvos can do the same with his tree-tapping crews. Who would have thought roses were good for anything other than looking pretty?"

"You folks all have magic," I said. "Aren't there charms to speed the growth of plants? Why can't you plant vegetable seeds and speed up their growth?"

"Yes, that's possible, but it takes a lot of magic to do so, and the weather needs to be warm," Aylem replied, "but the growing cycle for plants depends on temperature. It's not warm enough yet. There's still snow in the mountain holdings and north of Two Ferry Island along the river."

"But you've got magic, dammit," I said. "You can control temperature."

"Not outside, we can't," Aylem looked vexed with me.

"That's not what I meant. Do it indoors. Raoleer is making plate glass now," I pointed out, "so use that to build greenhouses."

Aylem's jaw dropped.

"What's a greenhouse, Great One? Isn't glass too fragile to build with?" Imstay asked me.

"A greenhouse is a building with a clear roof and walls," I explained. "Sunlight comes in and warms the inside much warmer than outside, so you can grow plants in cold weather. The important part is the light because plants are sensitive to certain wavelengths of sunlight to grow."

"Wavelengths of light?" Imstay asked.

"Oh dear," Aylem just shook her head. "You should stop with the questions for now, Imstay, or we'll be here all night while Emily explains the theory of light." She turned her attention to me, "How would you build a greenhouse, Em?"

"You make a simple iron or steel frame with angle bar or channel bar, then drop the plate glass into the frame. There aren't any plastics to make waterproof seals, so I'd use pine pitch or something similar. Then you can pop out the glass panels in warm weather to keep it from getting too hot inside."

"These greenhouse things sound promising," Lisaykos said, "but Raoleer can only make one large pane of glass a day when she can spare the time from running her shrine. We don't have enough glass."

"What about the calcite you use for windows now?" I wondered.

"We mined out our clear calcite deposits centuries ago and must now import it from Jutu," Imstay said.

"If that's the case, I think foraging for rose hips would get some vitamin C into people faster, assuming you wanted to address hunger disease right now," I remarked, thinking about the logistics involved. "Maybe that could be a task for spoot slaves who are healthy enough to do the work."

"We don't have appropriate clothes to send them into the snow to forage," Moxsef interjected. "They traditionally have worked inside communities and not on the land."

"What about the farm workers on the holdings?" I asked. "Isn't this an idle time for them? Their labor should be available since planting hasn't started yet. They should have clothing for foraging."

"Yes, farm labor should be able to forage in the snow," Imstay considered. "We use them for clearing the roads after snowstorms so they are dressed for the weather."

"Wait," Aylem held up a hand. "Em, do you know what the chemistry is for vitamin C?"

"It's ascorbic acid," I said. "which is C6H8O6, but in a goofy arrangement. It's got a short chain of carbons with hydroxyl groups hanging off them but ending in this funny pentagram of four carbons and an oxygen on one end."

"If you can visualize it for me like you did with Teflon, I can make some," Aylem offered. "Will it dissolve in food?"

It was my turn to be gobsmacked, "You can make some? Damn, of course you can, you monster. Yes, it dissolves in water, so it should dissolve in food. It might make food taste funny. Why not make pills instead?"

"Any idea how much is needed to cure scurvy?"

"Not a clue." I shook my head, "but it's not toxic. If I remember correctly, too much vitamin C will give you an upset stomach, a lot of flatulence, and not much else. So if the patients start farting a lot, cut back on the dosage."

Fed started laughing at what I said. She received a withering look of disapproval from her grandmother, which was undermined when Katsa laughed, too. Soon, we were all laughing, which was welcome catharsis at the end of this terrible day.