Spinspace: The Space of Spins (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 2) (22 page)

Chapter 54:

Kareef:
whom he pleases

“He grants wisdom to whom He pleases...”

– Quran 2:269

The afternoon winds had blown most of the snow off the street into doorways and piled it up against curbs and buildings.  He noticed this as he climbed out of the wagon to stand next to Qusay and the ambassador's wife.  “Why is there ice in the middle of the street?”

Qusay shrugged.  “Maybe they had some rain and then the temperature dropped again.”

He stared at the patch of ice again.  “But it's only here, nowhere else.  And it's square.”

“I'm sure there's a good reason for it.  You can ask them once we get inside.”

Two men that were obviously soldiers straightened as the three approached the front door of the building.  They were wearing trousers and coats made of leather, and from the looks on their faces Kareef inferred they hadn't seen anyone from his country before.

“Peace be upon you,” said Qusay.  “Is this the Governor's residence?”

“This is the place,” the man agreed.  “Who are you?”

“Could you tell your superiors that the Ambassador from the Emirates of Dixie is here, with a student for your School?”

The man's eyes widened a trifle.  “Yessir.  Please come in out of the cold, Ambassador, while I send word upstairs.”  He turned and held open the door as they entered the building.

The smells of hay and horse dung told Kareef that the ground floor was the stables, which was as it should be.  Who would take horses up and down stairs?  He heard the ringing of a smith's hammer from a corner somewhere.

The soldier led them to a room to await his officers.   “You've traveled a long way to get here, Ambassador.  Can I fetch you something to drink while you wait?”

“You are very gracious,” said Qusay.  As soon as the man left, the ambassador turned to Kareef. “Tell me your first impressions,” he said.  “What have you learned so far?'

“Their clothing is of leather,” said Kareef.  “So far I see no linen, which implies they have livestock, but not cotton.”

Correct,” said Qusay.  “But you should have known this already from your geography.  The climate here is too dry for cotton, and the hilly terrain leaves less flat land for agriculture.  What else?”

“They have smiths, and wear steel swords.  That means they mine iron, unless they trade for it.”

“Also obvious from geography,” said the ambassador. Some of the best iron comes from mountainous terrain.  We have some mines ourselves, in the Appalachians, but they have been worked and depleted longer than the ones here, because the continent was colonized first on the East coast.  Anything else?”

“Well...they seem to have more of the taller buildings still standing than we do.”

“True,” Qusay said.  “There are several reasons for it.  One reason is age.  Our cities are older.  Eventually moisture in the air or due to rain finds its way into cracks in the concrete and causes rusting in the steel rebar that reinforces the concrete.  The reinforcement loses strength and the structure is compromised and begins to collapse.  Building methods improved over time, so the first 'scrapers to collapse were the older ones.  This one looks like it might be one of the last ones built by the Ancients, so its steel is younger and better protected.”

The soldier reappeared with a tray of drinks.  They all accepted them, to be courteous, but when he turned to return the tray they smelled the contents carefully.  Kareef was pleasantly surprised to learn it was apple cider.  The familiar flavor brought with it a pang of homesickness.  Since there was no alcohol, he drained his mug rapidly.

“Do you notice the cider is chilled?” Qusay said.  “Unless they store it outside, where it would be in danger of freezing, this means they must have some functioning coldboxes.”

Kareef kicked himself mentally for not noticing it first.  Coldboxes were rare in the Emirates.  He wondered why the ones out here were still working.  The Tourists had come long after the continent had been colonized, so it could not be because the coldboxes here were younger than the ones back East.  The whole planet had received them around the same time.

The ceramic mugs told him nothing.  He could not imagine rivers without clay, so of course they had ceramics.  They had something else the Emirates lacked: the tanks lined up across the street.  But that meant nothing in itself, because they were made long ago and must have come here recently in the invasion from Texas.

The soldier rejoined them.  “I've sent Kurt up to tell them you're here,” he said.  “Someone should be down soon.  In the meantime, would you like to bring your wagon inside the building?  It'll be easier to unload that way and I'm sure your horses would like to come in out of the cold.”

“I would prefer to only unload once, when we reach our quarters,” Qusay said.

“Well it's not for me to tell you where to stay, sir, but I'm sure the Governor would be happy to have you stay in the building.  We've got plenty of room.”

Qusay nodded and sent Kareef out to tell the drivers and outriders.  “Do you have many ambassadors staying here now?”

“Only a few.  We've got one from Texas and another from Kansouri.  Maybe one from Okla, too.  But we still have enough room to give your people a floor to themselves.”

Kareef hoped whoever was coming down did it soon.  It would soon be time for
Maghrib
, the sunset prayer.  But Qusay was serene, and he tried to follow the ambassador's example and not show his impatience.

Presently he heard a door open nearby and a man in a gray robe walking with a staff entered the room.  “I'm sorry you had to wait,” he said.  “I am Xander, court wizard to the Governor.”

Qusay stood.  “Peace be unto you.  I am Qusay, Ambassador to Rado from the Emirates of Dixie.  This is my wife Ateeqa
, and Kareef, who has come to apply to be a student at your School.”

Xander closed his eyes for the briefest of moments.  When he opened them, they darted to Qusay's face first.  His left eyebrow twitched, as if he was resisting the urge to let it rise.  You are welcome to our land, Ambassador.”  He turned to Kareef.  “And you are welcome to my school, Kareef.'

Kareef was startled.  “Don't you have questions?'

“Always,” said the wizard.  “But in the ways of magic, we can tell immediately whether someone can become a wizard.  The rest is details. Your trip was not in vain.”  He turned back to Qusay and smiled.  “Although I would be surprised,” he continued, “if there were not persons closer to your home who could also teach you.   Please come with me and I will show you to your floor.  Will you be joining us for dinner?”

“We would be honored to,” Qusay said.  “But I hope you are dining soon, for we will be saying prayers at sunset.”

The climb up the steps was a long one, but well worth it.  When Xander showed them the bathrooms Kareef could see even Qusay's eyes widened a bit in surprise.

When Xander left to inform the governor that they would be attending dinner, the ambassador turned to Kareef.  “Your trip was not in vain, indeed!”  He turned a spigot and water flowed into the sink.  After a bit it was steaming.  “What have you learned now?”

“He can make swizzles work,” said Kareef.  That the water was hot implied the use of everflames also.  But that was less surprising, because with good metal, an everflame lasted a long time.

“Few among the Order can do that, refresh a swizzle,” Qusay informed him.  “And none understand them well enough to teach others.  Yet this Xander obviously can and does.  You will learn some things here far more easily than you could have back East.”

“I learned something else.  He recognized you as a fellow magic user immediately.”

“Indeed.”  Qusay frowned.  “I suppose it was inevitable, since in any case I would have met him at the Governor's court if not upon our arrival.  Nevertheless, now that he knows the Emirates have magic users too, my time here becomes a dance, to see which of us can learn more about the other.”

“You may know things he does not.  If he teaches me what he knows, and then you or others of the Order fill in the things he does not know, why, then we shall know more in the Emirates than they know here in Rado.”

“Very true,” the ambassador agreed.  “You must be like the empty bottle, receiving all they pour into you.  Whereas I must be like the sealed vessel, protecting and retaining its contents.  Come, let us wash for dinner and see what we can learn there.”

Chapter 55

Nathan
: the
wards

כל מילה של אלוהים היא ללא רב
ב;
הוא מגן למי שלוקח מקלט בו

“Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.”

– Proverbs 30:5

By the time they were nearing Denver he felt as if he would be happy to never see the inside of a wagon again.  It was not that their cabin was not as comfortable as a wagon could be, but rather that he simply longed to be able to move about.  Which was ironic, in a way, because the wagon itself was almost constantly in motion.

He had long since given up asking if they could stay at an inn.  His father was very firm about that.  According to him, any place where people did not settle, but merely passed through was more dangerous.  Anonymity was favorable to crime, he asserted, because it was harder to steal where one would be recognized.

”But surely we have little to steal,” he said once.

“Irrelevant,” his father said.  “Strangers don't know that.  And the most dangerous time is when a stranger creeps in to steal and is discovered.”

“But you're a Tzaddik!  Couldn't you just...just pray to God to set them on fire, or something?”

“Starting unnecessary fires inside a house is rude at best and dangerous at worst,” said his father.  “But leaving that aside, I can't put you at risk.  If you came to harm, the ten plagues of Egypt would be nothing beside your mother's wrath.”  So they slept in the wagon every night, after pulling off the road.  Isaac would “set the
wards
” before they went to sleep.  Nathan once asked him what he was doing.

“It's a special prayer,” his father answered.  “We ask God to put up an invisible fence around the wagons.  If an intruder large enough to be dangerous, like a thief or a bear, crosses the invisible fence it will make me wake up, so that we will not be taken unawares.”

That sounded safe, yet he still longed for the softness of a bed.  There wasn't enough padding to make the hard wood soft.

On the last night of their trip Nathan thought he would never fall asleep.  He told himself it was unhelpful, but his body was restless, excited about finally meeting strangers and seeing unfamiliar sights.  Nathan shifted restlessly.  He was nearly too long to sleep on the wagon's bench.  Fortunately for him, his father, lying diagonally on the floor, was also sleepless.

“Have you ever traveled this far before, papa?”

“No, but I've made a lot of shorter trips.”

“Will you be busy in meetings a lot?”

“I don't know.  I've never done this before, you know, being an ambassador.  But I'm sure there will be a lot to discuss.  Like trade.  Did you know New Israel has never had a formal trade agreement with Rado?”

“No.  Why not?”

“Well, we're almost two thousand miles away from them.  Most of our trading with distant countries like Rado and Wyoming has been informal and indirect.'

“I don't understand.”

“Well it's like this caravan we're in.  It's not a government enterprise.  It's owned and run by a private trader.  He buys things in the East and sells them to the West, then does the reverse on his way back.  But if we had a formal trade agreement with Rado, it would be different.”

“How would it be any different?”

“Well, suppose you're a mine owner who wants to sell ore to someone in Rado.  Or garnets, or dried apples.”

“They don't have apples in Rado?”

“How should I know?  The product is irrelevant.  The point is, you have to either (a) trade through some caravan owner or (b) set up your own caravan to get the .  Either way it costs you money and puts your people at risk.”

“Isn't that the cost of doing business?”

“It doesn't have to be, with the right trade agreements.  If you live in a country that has one with Rado, there's a third option.  You sell your goods to the government and let it worry about the caravans.  That way you've unloaded your merchandise, you've gotten paid for it...and the government has to pay the drivers and armed guards.”

This all sounded unreal to him.  “Is that why we're traveling two thousand miles from home?  So merchants back home can make more money with less risk?”

“Not primarily,” his father said, after a slight pause.  “But if we can pull that off too, why not?”

The pause bothered him.  What was his father not telling him?  “Then why are you going there...primarily?”

Another pause.  “Well, officially we're just establishing diplomatic ties with Rado.  It's long over due, especially now that we know they're in an alliance with Texas.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“When we left home we were going to Denver. We had suspicions that the Honcho would be trying to expand his empire, but we didn't know it would be this soon.  If the Lone Star Empire had conquered Rado, we'd be changing destinations and going to Dallas instead of Denver.  But that didn't happen, so we're still going to Denver.”

He shifted his weight on the bench.  “You're confusing me.  Why would we have gone to Dallas if their invasion succeeded?”

“For early warning, for one thing.  If one country is going to attack another one, they sever diplomatic ties first and kick out the ambassadors.  If I was in Dallas and they decided to go after New Israel, Texas would throw me out and we'd know they were coming.  Eliminates surprises.”

He pondered that.  “Couldn't they just, I don't know,. Lock you up and attack us with no warning?”

“They could but they wouldn't.  It just isn't done.  In the last world war the countries that acted that way got pounded. Besides, as a representative of my country's government, I have diplomatic immunity.  Anyway, since they are in alliance with Rado now, being in Denver is just as good as Dallas, and a lot more interesting at the moment.”

“But what about Dallas?”

“Oh don't worry about them.  When the word gets back to our government that there's an alliance, they'll send someone to Dallas too.”

“But we're staying in Denver, right?”

“For the time being, yes.”  His father rolled over on his other side.  “Now say your prayer and go to sleep.”

Nathan lay back and closed his eyes. “
Praised are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the universe, who closes my eyes in sleep, my eyelids in slumber.  May it be Your will, Adonai, My God and the God of my ancestors, to lie me down in peace and then to raise me up in peace.  Let no disturbing thoughts upset me, no evil dreams nor troubling fantasies...”

But even after he was finished with his recitation, he was not at peace.  What if the alliance ended while they were in Denver?  Would they find themselves in a war zone?