Maker of Fire

Lisaykos, Aybhas, Planting Season, 5th rot., 9th day

Aylem kept track of Emily as she climbed the parapet wall surrounding the north balcony and sat down on it, looking out on the ruins of the north market. She sat there all morning through the second, third, or fourth bells. I guessed she was so deep in thought that she didn't hear the bells.

The staff had already set up fish stew and bread for mid repast. I left orders that Thuorfosi and the Queen could order anything else they might desire from the kitchen. I ensured at least one cook could respond to whatever they wanted.

Emily didn't move from the parapet after the fourth bell rang, so I took her cloak and walked out to disturb her thinking trance. She needed to eat. Despite gaining some weight, she still was too thin.

I wrapped her cloak around her. From her twitch, I could tell I had startled her. She must have been deep in thought.

"You've been out here for quite a while, dear heart," I said as I leaned against the parapet next to her. "You have mid repast waiting for you in the dining room."

"Is it already mid repast?" She looked up at me with a bemused expression. "I didn't hear the fourth bell."

"It rang not long ago, so the stew is still hot, and the bread is still warm."

"I'm not really hungry, Lisaykos," her eyes apologized to me. "I think I just want to sit here and think. Thank you for bringing me my cloak."

I gave her a disapproving glare down the length of my formidable nose. She raised an eyebrow in response.

"You have a bad habit of not eating when upset," I pointed out. "It doesn't help with your problem of being underweight, and it hurts your health in the long term."

"I have difficulties forcing myself to eat," she growled softly.

"I'll make a deal with you," I folded my arms and did my best to loom over her. "Come in and at least make an attempt to eat something, and I won't send Kayseo out to coerce you."

The look of outrage I got in reply almost made me laugh.

"Do I need to carry you, Great Bug, or do you want to walk back to the dining room on your own two feet? I'll even let you climb down on your own."

"Damn overgrown monsters," I heard her mutter softly. She was barely audible. Then she leapt down on her own and started walking. I walked past her and held the door open for her. She rewarded me with another look of angry discontent. I confess the catharsis of Emily's brief return to my world was welcome. It took the edge off the grief I felt but did not have time to work through.

It was difficult to match my pace to hers, but I walked back with her to the south wing. "So, what were you thinking about all morning sitting on the wall?"

"All kinds of things, but mostly, I was just watching the crews start to clean up the ruins and recover remains. Where do the wagons with the remains go?"

"Out to the cremation grounds across the river. We're lucky the bridge beams didn't burn, though we lost some of the deck. The Shrine of Gertzpul had a crew up overnight to replace where it did burn."

"That's right," Emily made a thoughtful face, "Foskans cremate their dead and bury the ashes or toss them in a fissure." She stopped, and her expression changed to something profound and fey. "As it has pleased Almighty God in his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dearly departed, we commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. For by the sweat of your brow, you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of the ground you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The words had weight and beauty, and I was stunned. The very air felt profound to me as she uttered them.

After a long pause, I asked, "Is that a prayer to Gertzpul?"

Emily shrugged, and the strange spell passed, "It could be, perhaps. Those are the words of the scriptures of a distant god who has no presence on Erdos and once ruled the reality called Earth. The words are from the rites said over the dead from the country where Aylem once lived."

She blotted the tears from her eyes and kept walking. I wondered if sitting on the wall and watching the world was part of her grieving process. Wolkayrs was one of the few Cosm whom she came to trust without a speck of fear. They had been friends.

"What happens to the Coyn who lost their owners in the fire?" Emily asked.

"If they aren't inherited, then their ownership reverts to the Restful Shrine of Surd."

"What about now, if their ownership is in doubt, or their new owners are far away? Who takes care of them?"

"The Healing Shrine and all the chapel shrines work together to shelter and feed anyone who is adrift. The Healing Shrine takes care of any healing, obviously. The local chapel shine of Surd coordinates providing shelter. They have help from the Clergy of Erhonsay at the garrison, who have a store of temporary housing in the form of tents and pavillions if we run out of more solid housing. The local chapel shrine of Mueb coordinates feeding those who need it.

"Large fires and riots are rare, but we have a lot of practice responding to floods, storms, and blizzards. This situation isn't different from those, excluding the questioning of the rioting slaves to discover if anyone acted in contradiction of the law. Imstay King has already made it clear that judgments will be based on the new law, not the old one."

Emily frowned as she pondered my words. Then she looked up at me, "The slaves who threw the bombs at the shrine, did they commit sacrilege?"

"No, it's a different offense in this case. It's the crime of desecration since it was against sacred property instead of against a sacred person. The punishment is death by birds."

"Ugh," Emily grimaced.

"I think it is the worst of all the capital punishments," I said. "It is both painful and slow. I know because I have attended two such executions, and they were both hideous."

"I can't understand how anyone would think they could get away with such a crime. What were they thinking? No one can escape the Cosm system of justice when someone like Aylem exists who can compel entire cities to bend to her will. No Coyn can escape that. They had to have known that their actions would result in a terrible punishment."

"Captain Looxyas informed me this morning that several of those apprehended but not yet questioned committed suicide overnight," I explained to Emily. "I suspect that they had already resigned themselves to death before they attacked the main shrine complex."

"But to what end? What did they hope to accomplish? How could such a stupid action advance any sort of positive action to end the oppression of the Coyn? The Healing Shrine is not part of the problem in Foskos. The Healing Shrine doesn't even own slaves."

"Actually, we do. We own a small number of Coyn trained in bookkeeping, who we treat as well as the musicians from the Singing Shrine of Sassoo. They are assigned to some of the larger chapel shrines outside of Aybhas. We don't use them at smaller chapel shrines because the accounting ledgers are too big for them to handle physically, so they never serve as sole accountants."

"What will you do when they are freed?"

"I've asked all my deputies what they would do, and then I'll pick the best solutions from their suggestions. I suspect I will pay my Coyn a wage appropriate to their labor. Since the Healing Shrine also controls a lot of housing, I suspect I'll see some of those wages back as rent. I may need to build new housing since I know some of those Coyn will want to start their own families, and I don't have a lot of residential stock to fit Coyn families."

"That doesn't sound too bad," Emily had her thinking face on.

"The big problem is how to equalize pay for different living costs of Cosm versus Coyn, even when the skilled labor provided is the same. Bookkeeping is a good example here since a good Coyn accountant can be just as competent as a Cosm. The problem is that a Cosm will need eight to ten times as much food and a bigger place to live. How do I juggle payment systems to be fair to Coyn labor while fulfilling the needs of Cosm, who consume much more than little folks like you."

"Hmmm," Emily glared at the floor. "That's a problem I've never even thought about. That's nasty."

"How would you solve that problem, dear heart? I was curious what her inventive mind might come up with.

"I would split the pay into pieces, with a housing allowance, a food allowance, and then wages appropriate to a person's skill and experience."

"Wouldn't that give Coyn crafters an unfair advantage since they eat less and need less room to live?"

"That's less of a problem than you think since labor has already sorted itself out by Cosm and Coyn, for the most part. There are no Cosm engravers since most Cosm can't see the finest detail necessary to do that kind of work, and there are no Coyn in heavy construction, freight handling, or magical contracting. It's the intellectual and skilled trades where you must worry most about housing and food allowances. Most issues will arise with folks like bookkeepers, artists, musicians, engravers, teachers, and certain artificers. But pay would sort itself out quickly, especially since there are not enough Cosm to do all the work in Foskos that needs to be done, like on farms.

"How so?" I asked, thinking Cosm would be more efficient for farm work because of the size advantage.

"Maximum crop yield depends on narrower furrows than Cosm can fit between, and no Cosm can weed as effectively as a Coyn and not damage root systems because of body weight," Emily tossed off. "Coyn are just better suited to farming."

"Coyn can't pull plows or harrows," I pointed out.

"That's what horses, mules, and oxen are for, Lisaykos," she rebutted, shrugging, "or a Coyn farmer could hire a Cosm day laborer to do the plowing."

I had to stop mentally to imagine a world where a Coyn could own a holding and hire a Cosm. It was strange and felt unnatural. Not for the first time, I felt the world was changing too fast.

She stopped in front of the door into my dining room from the corridor and grinned up at me, "Cosm are just too big to do many jobs, like ice fishing, weeding fields, or picking delicate low-bush bog berries. I think if there's a good social safety net to keep everyone with a roof overhead and food to eat, the labor market will sort itself out after a few years."

"What about the surplus of spoot slaves? That was a major factor in the riot yesterday."

"There's a food shortage most years, Lisaykos, but Coyn make good farmers. So, turn them into farmers and settle them in the Claw and Hook Rivers valleys on the other side of the Great Cracks. That solves two problems at the same time. Hire some Coyn farmers from the Naver and Yuxviayeth valleys to educate them. I was already planning to do just that, as well as financing the building of Mugash and Surd chapel shrines for health care, education, and social services like orphanages, work programs, and care homes."

"You were?" I was astounded and couldn't hide my expression as I opened the door. "I know you want to build a road across the Great Cracks, but an entire chapel shrine expansion into how many valleys?"

"Five," she replied as if it was the most mundane thing, "three for small grains and two suitable for grazing. I can't spend all my money on myself, so I might as well spend it to help those who are about to be freed. I'd also like to build some canals to go up the west side of the Great Cracks for the mines that I want to develop and to connect the Great Hook to Copper Basin. I thought I told you about all this."

"No, you mentioned the road and the canal up to your valley, but this is the first I've heard about five valleys of farms and chapel shrines. Perhaps you told someone else and thought you told me? That would be just like you, my absentminded friend."

"It sounds like you have plans for freed Coyn," said Moxsef, who bore the brunt of the spoot slave problem. "Would you mind sharing?"

"Can I eat first?" Emily stopped and frowned at the two eager high priestesses. "Someone I know dragged me here to do just that, so I should take care of that first."