The Iron Ship (22 page)

Katriona held her handkerchief up to her nose as Demion opened the door and stepped out.

“I told you this was no place for a lady,” said Demion with a mixture of admonishment and sympathy. He held out his hand to help her alight from the carriage nonetheless. “We’ll start with the production floor first. This way.”

Three Tyn came out to handle the dogs, their iron collars hidden under scarfs whose bright colours were undimmed by the dirt that caked them everywhere else. Child-sized and vulnerable by the drays, they crooned into the dogs’ ears. The dogs shut their eyes and lightly licked at the Tyn. The Tyn moved around the whole team, checking their feet and harnesses.

Demion waved at them. “Fine dogs, aren’t they?” he said cheerfully.

The Tyn watched him with diamond eyes. One spoke. “Very fine they are, master, yes, very good. Very good. But...”

Another Tyn shushed him. They shared hard looks.

Demion sighed. “They are always doing that. They have their ways. Katriona, no! Leave them...”

Katriona shook off his hand and approached the Tyn. They came no higher than her chest. They appeared sexless, near identical, with long noses and shocks of grey, coarse hair. One, from its skirt and headscarf, appeared to be female.

“No, please. What would you tell us?”

The female Tyn curtseyed. The one holding the dog’s head looked to the floor, evidently nervous. “Begging your pardon, goodlady,” she said; her voice was surprisingly deep. “We don’t mean to tell you your business.”

“Why?”

“Tall kado don’t like it much when we’re telling them their business,” said the one holding the lead dog. At close quarters, his relative youth to the others was apparent. His face was less wrinkled, there remained black in his hair. His utterance earned him a kick from the other male. All wore hobnailed clogs, so it must have hurt, but the younger male made no sound.

“We don’t mean to be forward,” said the older one hurriedly.

“I do not care if you are. What would you tell me?”

The Tyn looked at each other. The young one spoke hesitantly. “Begging your pardon, goodlady, but the left wheel dog has a problem with his leg.”

“Lokon, did you know this?”

The lead dog shook his head. He had a little Sorskian blood in him, but though he understood human words well enough he could not talk.

“Well then,” said Katriona. “What is your name?”

“Tyn Jumael,” said the younger Tyn.

“You are the groom?”

“Stableboy, goodlady.”

“Perhaps you could see to it for me then?” She fished in her clutch bag for a purse, and pulled out a copper bit. “For your trouble.”

The Tyn looked at it, and then at her.

“Take it, please.”

“Thanking you, goodlady,” said the Tyn. He practically snatched it from her. She smiled. “I will see to it for you.” The female Tyn scowled distrustfully, and went to oversee the uncoupling of the dog team from the carriage.

“What was all that about?” asked Demion as she rejoined him.

“There is a problem with one of the dogs.”

He nodded. “Ah. They have a way with animals, as with many other things.”

“There are many Tyn at the Morthrocksey mill?” Katriona watched them in fascination.

“A hundred or so. You like our little workers?” said Demion approvingly. “They labour hard and are honest, leaving aside their abilities, which are formidable.”

Katriona and Demion stopped to allow a two-storey goods wagon to rumble past. Fourteen huge dogs strained in their harnesses. They were unmatched, mongrels, picked for size and strength.

“Why do they work here?” she asked. “In the stories they are frolicking in the woods.”

“The wrong kind of Tyn,” said Demion. “These are not of that sort.”

“That does not answer my question, husband.”

“Oh, you know, they have nowhere else to go, I suppose.”

“Have you ever asked them?”

Demion looked uncomfortable. “They are a secretive people. They are bound to the place. They’ve lived here for, well, forever, I suppose.”

He led her over a bridge, and to a side door of the building. There a man in a formal suit waited, much thinner and a little younger than Demion, but the family resemblance was noticeable. He was accompanied by a female Tyn, her sex apparent only by her garb, although in her case her clothes were vibrant in the extreme, She wore layered skirts, three scarves, and a large, lopsided hat atop a headscarf that hid her wild hair, a style currently favoured by lower-class women. Her arms were hung from wrist to elbow with copper bracelets, many with numerous charms depending from them. Three mismatched necklaces sat on top of her scarves. The clothes were all heavily patterned, and to human eyes the colours and designs clashed unpleasantly.

They were antitheses of each other this pair, she short and broad, he tall and thin. Drab to colourful. Male to female. Human to Tyn. She was solid, he wan, his hair lank under his foundry-master’s hat. Both dipped their heads in deference to Demion as he approached them, but the man did so with a hangdog expression, a weary expectance of hard work that would not end. The Tyn projected pride and curiosity.

“This is my cousin, Holdean Morthrock,” said Demion. “He er, well, he runs things here on a day-to-day basis.”

“Goodlady,” said Holdean in a voice barely over a murmur. He took Katriona’s hand in fingers as limps as sprats and made a mime of a kiss over them.

“And this,” said Demion, looking down and smiling, “is Tyn Lydar, queen of the Morthrocksey Tyn.”

Tyn Lydar performed an uncomfortable looking curtsey with such solemnity that Katriona smiled.

“Please to meet you, Goodlady Tyn.”

“I am just Tyn, goodlady, to the likes of you,” said the Tyn.

“No no,” insisted Katriona. “You are a queen, and I am not. It is you that should be goodlady, and I goodwife.” Katriona performed her own curtsey.

Tyn Lydar smiled uncertainly. “If you say so, madam.”

“Well then!” said Demion. “My wife would see the mill, let us show it to her.”

“Very good, Master Morthrock,” said Holdean. “If you would like to come this way?”

The door, a nondescript twelve-panelled affair, one found on buildings throughout Karsa, swung wide at Holdean’s touch.

Noise landed a blow upon the ears, followed shortly by a second hit to the nose from the smell. Not as unpleasant as that outside, but just as strong, thick and greasy. Katriona stepped into a world she had so far only read about. Her father had refused to allow her into his own works.

A vast room awaited her, lit by light slanting in from tall windows. The ceiling was high. A furiously spinning axle ran along the ceiling below thick wooden beams, disappearing through a hole in the far wall. Every ten feet a leather band ran out from the axle to a flywheel. These were attached to further wheels by another axle. More, smaller bands ran from these drive wheels over individual workdesks. Levers by the desks allowed the workers to engage or disengage their power band, so activating the machines they worked at. There were a great many machines, of three common designs. Tyn and humans stood at them, working metal.

“The lathe room, madam.” Holdean spoke straight into her ear, and his breath tickled it in a manner that she found disagreeable.

“We make all kinds of things in here,” boomed Demion. “But they’re all parts for the engines.”

“These are assembled in another building?” said Katriona.

“Yes,” said Holdean. “We have everything to produce glimmer engines. Metal comes from the smelters at the end of the site. Ore is refined into ingots, that are then cast into whatever shape we require at the foundry, my chief area of responsibility.” He said this as if it were a death sentence, and not the path to respectability.

“Do you not find the enterprise at the mercy of ore prices?”

Holdean looked at her curiously. “No. Indeed, that was precisely what Uncle Demiaron wished to avoid. Ore is available from many sources, refined metal from fewer.”

“Each tier of processing narrows the pool of suppliers,” shouted Katriona over the racket. “By taking the process back to the providers of raw materials you should have a wider choice of supply, and therefore more command of the price.”

Holdean and Demion shared a glance. Demion shrugged.

“That is the theory,” Katriona went on, “but does it in effect work? I have read, as a matter of fact, that it is a fallacy.”

She walked on ahead, not truly desiring an reply.

Katriona headed down a row of workers, looking over their shoulders. Exposed machinery clattered and whirred everywhere. Showers of metal sparks fountained from cutting machines. Young boys stood to hand behind these workers, pails of water in their hands. There were more children crawling about in the guts of the machines. They crabbed their ways around pistons and shafts that could rip the flesh from their limbs as if they were hunting frogs in the woods, pulling out sharp curls of swarf and putting them into buckets. All of them had cuts on their legs and arms.

“You have a lot of children here,” said Katriona.

“Many,” said Tyn Lydar. Nothing could be read from her voice.

“They are given schooling four days of the week until they are seven. They only work two days, and have one day free every threeweek.”

“Surely everyone has the Freeday free, weekly?”

Holdean pursed his lips regretfully. “Oh no, goodlady, that is not so, but we are progressive here.”

“He means,” said Tyn Lydar, leaning in close to her, “that they are as progressive as they need to be.”

Demion laughed uneasily. “You see! It is as I said, the workers may indicate with their feet as to their preference of employer. It is not like the old days.”

“Do you have any difficulty with labour associations?” asked Katriona.

“It is precisely why we provide so much care to our workforce!” spluttered Demion. “To avoid that sort of thing.”

“But the associations have been agitating a great deal in the last three months, have they not?” Katriona was looking around the factory carefully.

“What kind of a woman have you married, cousin? Is she a yellow band?”

“She is a Kressind,” said Morthrock. Katriona glanced round at the pride in his voice.

“There are some,” conceded Holden. “But not as much as some of our competitors have suffered. Indeed, our enlightened policies to both Tyn and human worker are being blamed in some quarters for the recent disturbances.”

“You have suffered none here. I have not read of any in the papers.”

Holdean drew himself up. “We keep an eye out for agitators, we’ll have none of that here.”

“You are very interested in it all,” said Demion. “You are putting me to shame.” He tried to sound jocular, but it came across as forced.

“My father taught me to keep careful account of my investments,” Katriona said.

“My factory is your investment?”

“Marriage to you in my investment. It is to our mutual benefit that you succeed.” She watched over the humans and Tyn working at the benches. “What kind of shift pattern do you employ?”

“I am sorry?” said Holden.

“The shift patterns,” she repeated. “What kind? I did read in last month’s
Engineering Digest
that a greater efficiency can be achieved through staggered shift patterns.” The two men stared at her. “I read it, that is all. I am quite sure I understood it,” she said. “I am the daughter of Gelbion Kressind, he has a long interest in modern manufactory. My brother is Trassan Kressind, who they already suggest may succeed Arkadian Vand as the world’s foremost engineer. Why should I be any different? This,” she said, looking again around the workshop, “is in my blood.”

“I am surprised that a woman would be so interested in all this clatter,” said Holdean. The look on his face was annoying her. He was looking at her as if she were a pet who had performed some unexpected and wholly delightful trick.

She gave him a stare that made him step back. “It is a great surprise to me, cousin, that a man would not,” she said. “Your Tyn here are ruled by a woman, why do you find it so surprising that I, a woman also, would take an interest in the male’s world? And why, for that matter, is manufacturing and industry regarded as the sole province of men?”

Tyn Lydar chortled.

“Now, surely you have seen enough? Perhaps you agree that a mill is no place for a goodlady of your refinement?” ventured Demion.

“Five generations ago, my family was sailing cargoes of pickled fish on a single floatstone barge across to Lesser Macer and back. Any refinement I may have has been beaten into my soul by industry.”

“I see,” said Demion. He blinked in that way he had when wrongfooted. It annoyed both himself and Katriona.

“How many individual workshops are there in operation here, Master Holdean?” she asked.

“Over forty, cousin.”

“Not more? What of the others? There is redundant capacity at Morthrocksey?”

“There have been some difficulties. Competition,” he said. “We have had to let some become idle.”

“How many buildings are currently out of commission?”

Holdean looked uncomfortable. Demion coughed and flexed his spine. He looked at the roof.

“Mills three through seven, madam.”

Katriona drew in a slow breath. “What is your total number of workshops, assuming a workbench density such as I see here?”

“One hundred.”

“Very well then. Still forty then, including glimmer blend and foundry, smelters and furnaces?”

“About that, yes.”

“You see, my dear, too much to see,” said Demion, somewhat desperately.

“On the contrary, husband. I wish to see it all. Come along then,” she said when none moved. “We better be quick about it if we want to be back in time for dinner.”

Tyn Lydar gave a long, gravelly purr that turned into a chuckle. “Of course, goodlady, of course.” She fixed Katriona with a knowing eye. Katriona coloured, sure that the creature could read all her plans as if they were plainly written upon her face.

The Tyn smiled and slipped a hand into hers. It engulfed her own fingers and palm entirely. Warm, more leathery than a human hand and covered in calluses. Tyn Lydar patted her fingers with the other hand. Perhaps she could read her mind. Perhaps she did see what Katriona intended, for the abilities of the Tyn were varied. Then Tyn Lydar looked at her in a way that clearly conveyed a sentiment that made her heart skip.