Arcanum (75 page)

“You see?” said Vulfar, moustache bristling. “Nothing to it.”

Horst leant out of the hold to tug at Ullmann’s breeks. “Max? Are you going to tell us now what we’re doing on this tub? Or does that stay a secret forever?”

Reluctantly, Ullmann ducked back down and left their erratic progress down the river to Vulfar: there was nothing he could do except scowl, and he’d rather the bargemaster’s full attention was on keeping the boat pointing roughly in the right direction.

He reached into his jacket and retrieved the map that Wess had drawn. Unfolding and smoothing it out, he beckoned the Bavarians over to try and explain it.

“This is where we’re going, lads. This is Simbach.”

“Who’s the boy?” Morgenstern murmured without looking up.

Thaler, who was passing, stopped and leant over to inspect the work. He had proven to Morgenstern that objects fall at the same speed, no matter how heavy they are. Consequently, the Jew was deep in his al-Haytham, translating the Persian into Latin. They had discussed whether German would be better, but Latin was widely read and understood among the educated of their part of Europe.

“Oh, some Greek slave my lord Felix rescued. Apparently the Byzantine ambassador called this morning, and didn’t receive the answer he wanted.”

“So he left a slave behind as a warning?”

“No. He was busy killing the boy in the inner courtyard when Felix and Sophia decided such a spectacle was unseemly.” Thaler scanned the library and waved the boy over. He rattled towards them, carrying a tray stacked with bottles and plates.

“Are you letting people eat and drink around the books?” Morgenstern raised his face from the page. “That’s a little dangerous.”

“It’s the workmen,” sighed Thaler “I can’t stop them leaving their debris all around. At least now I have someone to tidy up behind them.”

Morgenstern put down his pen and flexed his fingers. “So he’s
your
slave now?”

“Agathos’s status is a little ambiguous, mainly because I can’t convince him he’s now free. The boy’ll get exactly the same treatment as an apprentice would, so the point is moot.”

The Greek boy slid his tray onto the table and looked up at Thaler, who frowned back.

“I’m certainly not used to such obedience.”

“I’m sure once he realises you won’t thrash him to death, he’ll become as uncooperative as the rest of the youth of this town.” Morgenstern beckoned the child closer and peered at him. “He’s a bit bruised. Perhaps you should give him a day or so to recover.”

“Light duties, Aaron. We all have to pull our weight, no matter how fast it falls.” Thaler smirked and dismissed the boy.

“Yes, very good.” Morgenstern retrieved his pen and dipped it. “So what precisely are your duties this morning?”

“Trying to persuade the existing librarians to work with Mistress Tuomanen is one.” Thaler sat on the edge of the table and scraped his fingernails across his scalp. “I mean, you don’t have any problem with that. She was what she was, and now she is what she is: literate and with nowhere else to go.”

“Do you want this book finished any time soon?” Morgenstern put the pen down again. “Very well. No, I don’t have a problem with former sorcerers as long as they remember they’re as mortal as I am. I can’t imagine that they won’t have problems with me, but as long as they leave me alone I don’t really care. Any tensions they cause are, as you suggest, for you to deal with.”

Thaler swung his legs. “You don’t like her.”

“She works for you, Frederik. My opinion is of little matter.” He tutted. “You might set her to sorting out all the arcana that came out of the White Tower. No one else really wants to touch it anyway.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” The master librarian pulled a face. “We know necromancy works, and I have a feeling it would be a grave mistake to allow her, or anyone trained in the magical arts, to go poring through their order’s greatest secrets. At best, she’ll become so dispirited she’ll leave. At worst, she might rediscover her appetite for ruling us. Homer and Virgil are a better diet for the moment, no? Until things settle down.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Morgenstern returned to his book. “This won’t translate itself.”

“Of course it won’t. Can I get you anything? More light? Paper?” Thaler slipped his feet to the floor again, ready to be off.

“Actually, yes.” Morgenstern picked up the al-Haytham and flicked back a few pages. “Can you find me some of these? He calls them lenses.”

“Lenses?” Thaler took the book from him. “What are they?”

“Sections of a glass sphere. Like a chord of a circle. They keep on coming up again and again, and they seem to have … properties that might be useful.” Morgenstern tightened his lips.

“We’ve glass spheres from the Order in relative abundance, from small to very large. I’ll ask the glassmakers if there’s anything they can do with them.” Thaler examined the book, trying to interpret the densely packed lines. “If all this is true, al-Haytham was a clever bastard, wasn’t he?”

“From what I understand, his king locked him up in a tower for years over some misunderstanding about the Nile.” Morgenstern retrieved the book from Thaler’s fevered hands. “He had nothing to do but think and write.”

“That sounds – much as I’m enjoying the challenge of the present days – like a librarian’s idea of Valhalla.” Thaler looked up. “I do wish they’d get on with glazing the oculus. Nothing but hair-brained schemes that’ll come crashing down on our heads so far.”

“Perhaps when you see that daughter of mine, you could tell her to crack the whip a little harder.” Morgenstern set the book open on the desk and found his place again. “Is that offer of an under-librarianship still open?”

Thaler started. “Yes, Aaron. Yes it is.”

“It strikes me,” said Morgenstern, wiping the dried ink off the nib with his sleeve, “that Sophia is going to become more, not less, involved in the affairs of state. I have no one to look after me. Oh, I’m sure she’d pay someone to keep house, but my work there is done: for better or worse, she’s off my hands.”

“I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement,” said Thaler.

“Can some of the cooks learn the kashrut? It’ll need to be done in a separate kitchen. Or I can just get one of the Jewish families to send me meals.” He shrugged. “It’s not difficult.”

“You’d be a welcome addition, Aaron.” Thaler patted the man on the shoulder, and left him to his translating. He needed some fresh air.

Stepping out under the portico, he found the square full of piles of building materials, together with the builders who’d brought them. Some of the guildsmen were arguing over scale models of what they wanted to place on top of the library dome. When they spotted him, they hurried towards him, each seeking to have their design judged better than their rivals’. The contract was lucrative, and worth fighting over.

Thaler retreated quickly to the safety of the entrance hall, where, to his relief, Sophia came to his rescue. She shooed the craftsmen away.

“They’re right, of course. We have to come to a decision soon,” she said.

Thaler allowed himself to be guided back inside.

“But none of their designs are suitable. They’re either too heavy or too flimsy: better to have the wind and the rain get in, than for the ceiling to fall in and crush us, or the construction to fail at the first whiff of a storm.”

She held up her hand. “There is one design among them that’s caught my eye. Why don’t we go and have a look?”

“But they’re like ravening beasts out there.”

“Frederik, I’ll be with you, and you need to see this.” She turned him around, tucked her ledger under her arm like a shield and, with Thaler sheltering under her wing, she marched him across the square to a group of men sitting next to a small wood-and-glass building. He couldn’t remember having seen the building – which resembled a giant lantern, tall enough to hold a full-grown man – the day before.

As they approached through the bustle, the men stood and dusted themselves down.

Thaler looked at them, they at him.

“Where is it, then?” asked Thaler. He peered through the windows.

“That’s it.” She pointed at the octagonal building. “The whole thing. Who’s in charge here?”

“Me, my lady. Seibt.”

He appeared to be no older than the journeymen around him, who all appeared to be barely out of apprenticeship. As he spoke, he tugged at his black hair.

“Master Seibt,” said Sophia, “please show your construction to Master Thaler.”

“Us? Yes, of course.” He was momentarily transfixed, but, on recovering, pushed his colleagues into action. “And it’s Mr Seibt, my lady.”

Thaler watched as they removed the glass: it came out in frames held in place with toggles. It took them moments to take down a whole side, stacking the individual panels together on a blanket. They worked their way around each of the eight sides in turn, and when the last pane had been removed, they just lifted the roof off, carrying it high above their heads and clear of the structure to lay it on the ground.

“It’s one-quarter size, my lady. Seasoned pine for lightness and flexibility. The roof is shingles, but we can copper it or gild it if you wish.” Seibt wiped his tall forehead with a cloth.

Thaler stepped inside and patted one of the uprights. “And you made this when?”

“Truth be told, Master Thaler, there’s no other work. It occurred to me that without magical light, houses and halls were going to be so much darker. We built it in the hope that someone would want it, if not you.”

Sophia crossed her arms around her ledger. “Mr Seibt, what happened to your master?”

“He …” Seibt stared at the ground, “he died, my lady. At least we think he did. After the, you know, emergency, there were a few of us who couldn’t find a guild-accredited master, so we formed our own company. And someone had to apply to be the master of it, so I was chosen, except we don’t have the money for the fees.”

“Your guildmaster?”

“Master Emser, my lady.”

“I saw him yesterday, along with the other guildmasters. I’ll have to see them all again today: your situation won’t be unique.” She stepped inside the timber frame with Thaler. “Well, Frederik? Do you think it’ll do?”

He slapped his hand hard against the wood and it hardly shivered. “I imagine there are advantages to being able to construct all the parts at ground level. Shouldn’t we consider some of the other … ah … more experienced craftsmen?”

“We could. But if this will do …” She turned to Seibt. “How quickly could you build a full-size whatever-you-call-this?”

“A roof lantern, my lady, because it—”

“I understand.”

“We can cut the frame in a week. The glazing will depend on the glassmakers. Two weeks? Three?” Seibt seemed to be having trouble breathing. “My lady, we’re not properly even part of the guild.”

“Leave that to me,” she said. “You’ll have your papers by tomorrow.”

Thaler’s gaze slid past Sophia to the crowd that had gathered around them. The other masters and journeymen looked less than pleased at being trumped by a few upstarts.

He leant in. “Sophia. The guildsmen.”

“The guildsmen will be stealing this design and touting it as their own by nightfall. However, the original creators need both our encouragement and our money. And when they’ve put up their roof lantern on the library and shown it works, everyone will want one.”

“We’re trampling on every tradition we have,” he complained.

“I know.” She smiled brilliantly at him. “If we don’t, we’re doomed.”

“There’ll be a price to pay, though. And we can’t make that price too steep, or there’ll be rebellion along with it. Civil strife is worse than war.” He felt a rumbling in his guts.

“Frederik, we’ve been paying through the nose for over a thousand years already, and those at the bottom of the pile always pay the most. The trick is how to raise them up without making those at the top feel like they’re losing too much.”

The rumbling got worse, and he clutched at his stomach, then realised that his whole body was vibrating.

He wasn’t the only one who’d noticed something strange was happening: the window panes piled on the blankets were chattering and rattling. The very ground itself was shaking.

The crowd in the square grew tensely silent, with everyone looking either up in the sky or down at their feet to find the source of the ill-favoured movement.

A strange whistling noise rose over the rumbling, starting off low and building to a crescendo. Suddenly, a jet of water shot into the air, rising from the square’s fountain like a javelin. The burst lost its shape, and started to fall back. Droplets sprayed into upturned eyes and wide-open mouths, and another, steadier stream started to fill the bowl around the base of the fountain.

From a distance came the faint echoes of a cheer, and Thaler felt a surge of relief and delight. He’d been proved right. They had water again. The town was saved. With the help of the dwarves, they could restart the machines under the fortress. They could build and adapt; not just survive, but grow and thrive without magic.

He’d doubted it up to that moment. Now, no longer. He felt quite faint.

“Master Thaler? Frederik?”

He waved her away and stumbled towards the fountain, a path opening before him, closing behind him. He held on to the stone rim and looked at the rippling surface of the deepening pool.

There was another noise, and when he turned, he found they were applauding him, every man there. Only then did he realise that his underground exploits had made him famous. He tried to wave them down, but they only cheered his name louder.

Crying with relief and with joy, Thaler raised his chubby arm and clenched his fist. “Carinthia!” he shouted. “Carinthia!” And all the people joined in.

Büber had no idea how long he’d been awake; they wouldn’t let him outside to look at the sky, even though he could see the crack of grey light around the doors that led out onto the mountain.

Neither did he know how long he was expected to wait: when King Ironmaker had told him he’d have the dwarves’ answer soon, he hadn’t realised he’d be kept prisoner until then.