Maker of Fire

Kayseo's wedding feast, Truvos, Planting Season, 6th rot., 3rd day

"What were you thinking, you idiot?" During a pause in the feast, Imstay pulled Usruldes into an unoccupied room and set a guard on the door. Both were dressed in their blue robes from the wedding.

"Not only do I need to finance a new bridge," Imstay continued, "complete with one of those expensive piers in the middle of a high-velocity river, now I must also build a new road immediately, during a war year with all my excess labor allocated to two full armies. I will need to delay a substantial number of my soldiers to clean up the mess you made. Why are you smiling, you worthless excuse of a…a… Stop laughing! This isn't funny. You didn't even eliminate Lord Kas' brother, Taliashos."

"Taliashos haup Kas will be sent to the mines by the courts," Usruldes smiled with contentment. "We found hard evidence that he's been running a roc eagle breeding farm north of Kas in the Lava Swamp, which violates the Mounts' Treaty. We turned over that evidence to the justiciars two days ago. His arrest and interrogation in the Well of Galt is as good as done."

"Quit chuckling, Little Brother, or I'll feed you to your eagle."

"Big Brother, I can finance your new road and provide the labor to build it. I can build and finance your bridge, too. I don't need to use a single soldier." Usruldes' grin was so wide that it threatened to split his face in two.

Imstay's frown of disbelief was profound. "Impossible."

"Big Brother," Usruldes couldn't help chuckling, "several tens of thousands of spoot slaves are sitting idle in need of something to do. We can hire a thousand or two of them."

"Coyn can't do heavy construction, you fool."

"Imstay King, you are the fool. Stop thinking like a racist Cosm and consider the Sea Coyn, who build bridges out of huge blocks of stone over mountain gorges using a thing called a keystone arch. You've never seen an Inkalemi bridge, so you don't realize what Coyn can really do, even without Emily. Of course, they can do heavy construction. They just need to use more people to do so, and they employ all those wonderful tricks Emily uses to move weights much bigger than they are. The Sea Coyn don't even use wood beams in their bridges, brother. You should ask the Council of Five to visit one of their bridges, maybe this rotation, before you take the northern army up the Yantes River. Lord Fusso could even get the army to start its march for you, and you could catch up if necessary."

"Alright, Little Brother," Imstay leaned against the wall, arms folded, "assuming you are correct about using little, weak, magickless Coyn for work easily handled by Cosm mages and laborers, what about the money? I never have enough money to fund everything I want to do, like the roads we need to build in Yuxvialeth and a new tow ramp for river barges at Black Falls. That's just the start. May I remind you that I'm already in the hole after paying Ud for rebuilding Black Falls plus the reconstruction costs two years ago after the floods?"

"You need to start thinking outside the box, boss, as Emily likes to say," Usruldes was grinning again. He was having fun, which made Imstay grumpier.

"You also need to talk with your wife," Usruldes purred, "who has been working on something called a tax-free government bond, which allows the government to borrow by selling bonds to investors at a low but tax-free rate of interest, which is indexed to our already low rate of inflation in the cost of goods and labor."

"Alright, spymaster money-suck who does nothing but spend my gold and manages none of the taxes or expenses of running a kingdom," Imstay had one eyebrow up but knew well enough to keep an open mind, "where do I find anyone with enough capital to pay for a new bridge and a new road in a war year, even assuming they will lend me that much money?"

"Emily and the White Shrine of Landa, both of whom have the worth of a large Lord Holder in liquid cash, uninvested and ready to use. Emily just paid for three Inkalemi ships and their crews for an entire season to transport the fire bricks and supplies she bought for the Chem, and it cost her less than three-hundredths of her total worth. Even with her plans to pay for the settlement of Coyn on the other side of the Great Cracks, complete with a trade road over the lava plain, plus three canals, she will have more than half of her wealth left over. You could use the Bank of Emily alone for loans.

"Your mother will say no."

"Yes, my dear mother won't let you borrow Emily's money without collateral, but she might if you had an attractive bond program to offer, secured by the kingdom's tax revenues. And I know Fassex. She is a shrewd investor for the White Shrine. She has her fingers in capital projects for businesses all over the kingdom, like the new rope works in Yuxvos, two new weaving factories in Kesmet, and the new salt works in Black Falls."

"Dammit, Little Brother, I think I need to sit down," Imstay shook his head, struggling to assimilate everything Usruldes had just outlined. "Money first. I must talk with Aylem, your mother, and that crock of sour milk, Fassex." He frowned, "but before we rejoin everyone for the handfasting, how did you manage it? No one would ever believe that Lord Kas' death was an assassination."

"Trade secret?" Usruldes replied, knowing he was teasing the King. He knew Imstay would insist on knowing.

"Little Brother, you will tell me how you did it," Imstay growled. "Given what you just cost my treasury, you will tell me how it was done, or I will be speaking to your mother about the Gantos Bridge incident."

Usruldes knew the King was joking, but it was a nasty threat regardless. Imstay was not in the mood to be teased.

"I knew of the ice dam danger," Usruldes explained. "I got word to one of my wraiths to make the piled-up ice as bad as she could manage. Then, we destroyed the bedrock under the middle pier of the bridge. I expected the pier to fail from the pressure of the existing debris before the ice dam broke, but that didn't happen. I was ready to help the bridge pier fail if the river didn't do it for me, but the ice surge did the trick. That was the easy part.

"The hard part was moving the flood water into the ground and then through the underlying rocks fast enough to get it under the road west of the South Twin Butte. I've been getting lessons from the Chem on their water magic, so I knew it could be done. Then, I applied the principles of moving water through the ground to moving magma up through the ground from the melted rocks that feed the Great Cracks. That's why I'm so tired because it was difficult. But I knew I could kill my targets, based on what Emily taught me about how those ground explosions work. She explained it after the one during the floods two years ago almost killed her, Cadrees, and me while we were flying home from our little rock-collecting excursion."

"Emily taught you how to make those ground explosions?" Imstay gaped. "You never told me that. You need to teach that to me. How hard would it be to do that under the Impotuan summer palace?"

"It would be impossible," Usruldes wondered if telling Imstay about the ability to create phreatic explosions was a mistake. "You need the molten rocks from the Great Cracks or a volcano to make it work." He decided he would not tell Imstay that the Queen could create a phreatic explosion anywhere, or the King might drag her off to war.

Usruldes, Truvos, Planting Season, 6th rot., 3rd day, the afternoon after the feast

"I'm amazed you were able to make the gold chloride so quickly, Huhoti," Emily said, standing on a chair to watch Huhoti wash the silver plate in an enameled basin. Huhoti was using a new potion with ingredients I couldn't even pronounce correctly. If I wanted to play more with cameras, I would need to master this strange knowledge.

"How long do I leave the plate in the solution?" Huhoti asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Emily said, shrugging. "I'm guessing myself as to proportions and times, though it does look like I got the thiosulfate proportions right."

"I never thought I'd be making a batch of lye right before I left yesterday just so I could make camera potions," Huhoti let the potion drip off the ends of her rubber gloves. "Venting the chlorine gas through gold dust to make the gold chloride was inspired, Emily. I'm glad you bothered the Queen to send that second message. I guess we'll know in the morning if the process worked. All the previous attempts faded by morning."

"I do hope it works," Raoleer said. "I love how the image stands up, almost like it had real depth above and below the silver plate. But it's so fragile like a loose powder barely holding onto the surface."

"I can't believe Kayseo was able to sit that still for that long," I added, looking at the image of the young Heir of Pinisla sitting in the red-tinted potion of soda something-or-other and gold clor-whatsit. Kayseo had sat very still for twenty counted breaths while Raoleer and Huhoti cast charms of light to imitate bright sunlight. We knew from our previous attempts that we needed very bright light and an unmoving subject to get a good image.

"So what does this potion do again?" I asked. Emily had added two new potions to the process.

"After the image is developed by the mercury fumes acting on the silver salts embedded in the silver," Emily explained to me patiently for the third or fourth time, "the excess silver salts are dissolved away by the sodium thiosulfate, leaving silver and silver sulfide behind. Then, this last potion substitutes some of the silver left behind with gold, which is why it's called the gilding step. The gold replacement also makes the image more stable than the powdery stuff left after the thiosulfate potion. It's still fragile but less fragile than if we stopped the development process after using the thiosulfate potion by itself.

"I can see you are still confused by this, Irhessa. We can sit down together when I return from Mattamesscontess, and I'll explain it all in greater detail."

I wondered when Emily had started calling me by my birth name instead of using my Hessakos nickname.

"If this works," Emily continued, "then I recommend a raised brass or bronze mat around the picture to protect its fragile surface, and a glass plate on top of that. Then, I'd put a bigger frame around the whole lot," Emily instructed.

"The image is so amazing," Raoleer said, studying the likeness of Kayseo on the small silver-plated copper billet, only four fingers on a side. "It looks just like the Hier haup Pinisla."

"Emily, when you described the camera on our trip to the Valley of the Vanishing River," I asked, "you said the ones you used were smaller and the exposure time of the plate was faster. How do we get from this to that?"

"First, better lenses," Emily got that thoughtful look of hers. "I'd have to take some measurements, but I think this lens is too thick for the angle of incidence, but it's too small in diameter for the amount of light we need. Next, we need to experiment with making more light-sensitive emulsions that can support the silver salts instead of the way we're doing it now. What we're doing with this camera is to place the light-sensitive silver salts directly on the surface of the silver through the use of the fuming lamp. But we need to crawl before we walk. So we should master the use of the silver-plated copper before trying emulsions.

Regardless, the basic chemistry is the same for all the different versions of making an image. It's the material used for the images that changes. All photographs use light-reactive silver salts that are stopped from further reactions by a fixing potion like sodium thiosulfate. Most are toned with something like gold chloride, silver chloride, or silver selenide. Everything else is just a variation of these basic steps: put the silver salts on a surface or in an emulsion, expose them to light, stop their reaction to light, and stabilize the image.

"Emily," I had to ask, "what's an emulsion?"

Emily looked shocked that I asked. Raoleer and Huhoti just shook their heads and smiled at me with sympathy.

"Irhessa, ask your mother." Emily grinned with evil glee and then laughed at my frightened expression.