The Iron Ship (7 page)

He retrieved the tool. With delicate disinclination he fumbled at the first lid. The countess rebuked him and he tried harder. He was no stranger to manual work, no matter how hard he feigned incompetence. She always saw right through him, except in that one important regard.

“Come and look at this, Mansanio,” she said.

He walked over to her as if it troubled him to be drawn from his work opening boxes, although that could not be further from the truth.

Standing by the countess was something Mansanio relished. Her body gave off a quick and lively heat more nourishing to him than the sun of his homeland. He relished the smell of her. She had a vigorous scent, and tonight the air buzzed around her intoxicatingly.

It was his privilege to be allowed so close. He forced his attention from her to the object she was uncovering in the box. The upper third of a sphere made of blacked bronze poked out of the straw. The Twin. Threaded holes waited for bolts to attach a curved rule about its vertical circumference. At about a yard and a half in diameter, it was huge. An incomplete topography was graven into its surface, her supposed map of the second world. Those lines had bought the countess much derision from those she desired as peers. Mansanio’s heart sank to see them so brazenly displayed.

“You see this?” she said eagerly. “This is the Twin. Other planetary bodies await in the boxes. Once this is assembled...” She looked up into the rafters. She smiled. “We’ll see then, won’t we? We’ll show them, you and I.”

“Goodlady, you should take your dinner.”

“Hmmm? Yes, yes. You are quite right.”

“Goodlady.” Mansanio stood, waiting to accompany her to the dining room.

“What are you doing?”

“Goodlady?”

“Bring it to me here! Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Mansanio suppressed a sigh. “I will see to it immediately.”

“Don’t be like that.” Most of her attention was on the boxes. All trace of her anger had gone. She patted Mansanio on the arm. “You are too good to me, Mansanio. A more loyal servant a lady never had. I’m sorry I tease you, it is but in jest.”

“Of course, goodlady,” he said. He left for the kitchen, his skin tingling where she had touched him.

The feeling of happiness quite deserted him when he returned from the kitchens bearing his mistress’s dinner. Light blazed from the hall. Laughter echoed from the open windows. The countess had called the men back to help her unpack her precious equipment already.

His frown deepened at the sight of Bolth, the cook’s lad, carrying a crate clinking with bottles up the steps to the donjon door.

It was going to be a long night.

D
AWN WAS APPROACHING
. The Twin was setting, the White Moon followed slowly, the Red Moon had already gone.

The countess was in her observatory. The turret provided only a modest platform for the her equipment. Her telescope and its turntable occupied the most of it, and so the circular walkway around the outer edge was crowded with every other bit of astronomical and astrological paraphernalia that would not fit in the middle (Mansanio could never remember the difference). But with the folding glass doors all around the wooden walls open and the dome cracked wide, the universe was let in, filling the room with endless space. The sea was dark in all directions, the sky blazed with stars. On the horizon, the lights of Karsa City made a poor attempt to outshine them. The chill of early autumn filled the room. Mansanio busied himself tending to the room’s three braziers while the countess disgraced herself, smoking her pipe while entertaining the chief of the draymen. Both were slightly drunk. Learning that Gorwyn actually was lesser nobility did nothing to warm the seneschal to the man.

“I do not think your guardian likes me much,” said Gorwyn. He lounged on the countess’s couch as if he were the master of the place. Mansanio pretended not to hear the man’s comment, as a good servant should not.

“Him?” said the countess. “Ha! Old Mother Hen. He is a relic of my past, a man out of my father’s country. I am cruel to him sometimes, but he is honest as the day is long and his devotion is as deep as the seas. You will not say anything against him, do you hear...?” she stuck her head forward questioningly, searching for a name.

“Tuom, madam. I am sorry, I do not mean to slander your servant.”

“Sorry, sorry. I am terrible for names,” she waved a hand. “Too much other nonsense in here,” she tapped her skull. “But I can’t be calling you Master Gorwyn all night. The time is past for that.” The countess removed the long stem of her pipe from her mouth. Clouds of blue smoke spilled out with her laughter. “What you said about my servant was no slander, sir, for he does not like you. You don’t like him do you, Mansanio?”

“As you say, countess,” muttered the seneschal.

“He doesn’t think I should be having strange men up in my den,” she said. Her eyes twinkled suggestively. “If you weren’t the son of Houter Gorwyn, he’d have you defenestrated.”

Tuom smirked. “Then I thank my father for being who he is.”

“He also does not think the likes of you or I should demean ourselves with physical labour, or by concerning ourselves with anything but lording it over those born lower than we.”

“He is welcome to his opinion, but he would be wrong. My father was quite insistent that I acquaint myself with our family’s interests.”

“That a family such as yours should have any trade at all is quite scandalous, as far as Mansanio sees it.”

“Father believes the old families will survive only by following the new money’s lead. They are not afraid to engage with the meaner things in life. Already, the richest among the new families are richer by far than the old lords. Land is no longer enough, countess. Industry is the key to wealth. Father says that our kind face a rapid decline into penury if we are not wise to it. I am sad to say I believe him. And so, here I am, third heir to a barony and a master of drays!”

They laughed.

“Well said!” she said. “This is an exciting era, Tuom.”

“For some, perhaps. I would have preferred things the way they used to be,” said Gorwyn. “But I’d rather be a rich drudge than an impoverished lord. As my father says, the aristocracy has had to change before, so we can change again. The world is not static, whatever the appearance of it. Those who think so forget our warlord forebears who bludgeoned their way to riches. It is fortunate our dilemma is less bloody.”

“But I disagree!” said the countess. “If only this change were more like those in the past. From warrior to indolent landlord. I rather feel it is going the other way this time around.”

“Then you are more sanguine in nature than I. I prefer the dogs to the dracon.”

“They say that once my ancestors were pirates, wandering where they would upon the seas, until one of them fell in love with a kelpie girl and set down iron chains to snare her, blah blah blah. This, of course, is nonsense. What is true is that they were clever enough to get themselves granted the rights to the floatstone islands that once shoaled hereabouts. Carving them up made them, and by extension me, rich. We were new money once, so long ago that people forget. My ancestors did not disdain industry, nor will I.”

“What is it that you do here now, countess?”

“Lucinella, please,” she said. Mansanio’s spine stiffened to hear her offering the familiar form of her name up like a penny.

“Lucinella.” The man tried the name. Emboldened, he stood and went over to the countess. Mansanio risked directly watching. The man was ten years younger than his mistress. He had the look in his eyes; another young buck who would soon be bragging he was bold enough to have bedded the Hag of Mogawn. Mansanio’s hands shook with anger.

“I am engaged on a quest for knowledge, and am rich enough to indulge my whim. Come here, look at this.”

“More stargazing, Lucinella?”

“Oh now, I have saved the best for last.” She put her drink and pipe down and walked to a set of wheels on iron stalks. She worked the handles of the crank to her telescope. “The entire structure is mounted on a turntable, masterfully geared. Clever fellow from Corrend. All mechanical, no assistance from glimmer machines. I spin a wheel here, and so! The centre of the room and the dome rotate around the periphery, which is fixed. That includes Mansanio there.”

Tuom grinned, pacing to keep himself level with the countess. She giggled.

“One would almost think that you had been within such an observatory before, Goodfellow Tuom.”

“Oh no, this is my first time.” He said this with such licentious innuendo Mansanio’s blood boiled.

“Is it now?” she said. She stopped the turning, glanced behind her to make sure the slot was lined up with the setting Twin, and hopped back onto the turntable. She declined the angle of the telescope, pressed her eye to the eyepiece, then beckoned to Tuom. He replaced her at the sight.

“What do you see?”

“Blackness. It’s the Twin. It is, as they say, the kingdom of shadow.”

They both sniggered, sharing the mirth of drunkards. Mansanio felt deliberately slighted.

“It is and it is not, Goodfellow Tuom. Look longer.”

She rested a hand on his back. He accepted it. Mansanio seethed.

Tuom gave a sharp intake of breath, and stood up.

“You saw it?”

He looked at her in wonderment, then bent back to the telescope. “A fire on the Twin!”

“And how did it look?” she said.

“A bright spark... A yellow lightning. It is gone. There it is again!” He was fascinated, and shifted himself so that he might be more comfortable at the eyepiece.

“The Twin is retreating from the Earth for another month. The Great Tide will flow back. But it is getting closer. Mark my words. The orbit of the Twin and the White and Red Moons are not as Sastrin, Hessind and the others suggest, that is pure ellipses. There is variation in them, a grand cycle beyond that already described. Floster Hessind’s mathematical model well established that there is an influence of mass from one body upon the other. Hence, I believe, the fire you saw, a result of flexion in the surface of that world that reveals the fires beneath.”

Tuom stood and smiled apologetically. “Flexion? Fires within worlds?”

“And where do you think our own volcanoes spring from? The inferno? The throats of dragons, chained underground?”

“You are rather leaving me behind with all this.”

“No matter. Just know, the device you have delivered to me today will help me prove this.”

“How?”

“I am afraid you would not understand.”

“What does it mean?”

The countess smiled. “I have my ideas, but I would not like to speculate. You will know the rumours concerning me. I am mad! I am dissolute! I am a man! I am a whore!” A touch of sadness entered her smile. “Only one of these things is true, and then only from a very narrow view. My true crime is to challenge the established orthodoxy of my discipline, and far worse it is that I am a woman. No, I must keep some secrets. I think you will have quite enough to gossip about when you return to the capital.” She took a step closer to him, and placed her hands on his shoulders. He smiled back at her. “Here, I am sure you understand the mathematics of this kind of attraction better.”

“Indeed I do,” he said.

“Mansanio!” she called, not taking her eyes from Gorwyn. “I will be retiring for the night soon. Please close up the observatory shutters. Then you may go.”

“Yes, goodlady,” he said reflexively. “Shall I prepare your room for you?”

Her smile, lustful and teasing, quite transformed her features. “No, that will be all.”

Mansanio closed the shutters, taking as long as he could. The countess’s whispers and giggles set a fire burning in him. Shame for her, and terrible jealousy for Gorwyn. Had he a knife, he fumed, he would smite him down, then we would see who laughed last.

But there was no knife, there never was. He was weak as milk, and loathed himself for it.

Their laughter tormented him as he descended the stairs.

CHAPTER FOUR

The God of Wine and Drama

“D
RINK
! D
RINK
! D
RINK
!” The patrons of the Nelly Bold hammered their tankards down in time with their words.

Eliturion, god, in one aspect, of wine, indulged them. A full firkin of ale was to his lips, small as a dainty bucket in his giant grasp. Foaming beer cascaded from the sides of his mouth, running down his long red moustaches, in amber falls, over his beard, his ample belly, and thereafter the floor. As much as he spilt, he drank more, the gurgle audible in his gut.

“Drink drink drink!” the patrons chanted with glee. As often as they watched Eliturion’s party piece, it still delighted them. “Drink drink drink!”

The god upended the barrel. The cries of the crowd became raucous. He stood, tipping the firkin right back. He held it away from him, slopping what little remained all over those nearest him. They shrieked with delight as he let out an almighty belch at the ceiling. Arms out, he turned slowly to let every handclap caress him. Then he cast the firkin toward the bar like a man at skittles, scattering drinkers. He sat down heavily. His ale throne creaked alarmingly.

The god was as big as gods were expected to be. In those years of the glimmer, that was larger than life. In recent centuries he had run to fat.

“Oi! Eli!” shouted the landlady. “Don’t roll your bleeding ale barrels about in here. How many times?”

Eliturion gave a raffish grin and another belch. “Sorry Nell,” he called back.

“Nell was my great-great-grandmother, you arse!” As the god was too large to admonish physically, she took her annoyance out on others, slapping customers out of the way, so that the barrel could be rolled out of the room and back to the cellars.

“Well, that should answer your question as to how many times I have been told that!” he crowed. The crowd laughed.

Nelly’s great-great-granddaughter, whose name was in actual fact Ellany, shook her head and stalked off back behind the Nelly Bold’s ornately carved bar. She had said it all before a hundred, a thousand times. As had her mother, and her father, and so on back to the beginning of the inn. Eliturion came and went, sometimes favouring some other drinking spot for a season or a decade, but he always came back to the Nelly Bold; crook-grinned and irrepressible as a pup. He was a fixture, part of her inheritance, so to speak, and damn good for business. So she left it at that. The crowd cheered her as she resumed her station.