The Iron Ship (43 page)

“We could take down the roof, demolish the building... I suppose we could run pipes here from the Morthrocksey...”

“I will show you. This is what we want.”

Kat’s chest tingled, she blinked. Her eyes itched. Overlaying the desolate scene before her was a brighter place. Water cascaded down from a high silver pipe. The metalwork gleamed. The water fell into a broad pool from which the tree, now a deep and vibrant green, drank with greedy roots. The symbols upon the stone glowed with yellow light. On the tree leaves of silver, bronze and gold rattled in a wind coming in through open skylights. The water was pure, as was the air. Greenery spilled in boxes from the walls. One bank of apartments had been removed. In their stead were tall windows, the tops fashioned of scintillating stained glass. Birds and dracon-birds flitted from branch to branch. And there was laughter. Naked Tyn children, no larger than human infants, splashed in the pool.

“You... You want children?”

“No Morthrocksey Tyn has been born for two hundred years. There are fewer of us every year. Yes, we would have children. Cleanse the river. Bring the river to us, let us be with the river. What was separated by degree can be joined together anew. We understand this modern world, better than you think. You cannot undo what has been done, as much as I wish to roam the moorland of my young days it is gone, buried beneath your Karsa. But you can make us live, as much as we might live. You can free us, as much as we might be free.”

Katriona stood on her tiptoes, trying to see what lay beyond the windows. “That is not Karsa City...”

“That is and never can be for you.” Tyn Lydar withdrew her hand sharply. As it came away Katriona yelped with pain. The vision faded. Drear reality took its place. With its reestablishment came overwhelming sadness.

“I will see what I can do,” she said.

“You will sign legal documents?”

“Yes, yes of course I will.”

“You will accept Tyn geas?”

She hesitated at this. Guis’s warning about the Tyn came back to her. “I will. When will you make the rods?”

“Not so quickly, Goodlady Kat. There is one more thing you must do. For us to perform this magic for you, you must remove our collars.”

Kat’s eyes widened. “I cannot!”

“There is no other way.”

“Truly?”

Tyn Lydar shook her head. “I would not ask if it were so. To take them off it dangerous for us. I do not want to trick you. But this magic must be worked in the old way.”

“Then I will do as you ask, Tyn Lydar, we will remove your collars for the duration of the manufacture. But they must be replaced. You will say that you can vouch for your people, but the ban of King Brannan must be obeyed.”

Tyn Lydar nodded, her eyes sad. “So be it,” she said. “We will make your rods of iron.”

K
AT STOOD BY
a heavy-wheeled shield, a modern echo of a siege mantlet made of steel. A thin slit glazed with green glass one third of the way down allowed her to watch the Tyn busy about the furnace. She wore a heavy leather apron and leather gauntlets over her clothes. The men of the foundry regarded her sidelong from the corner of their eyes.

She stood up. The gate to the furnace was shut, but the heat was a physical blow. “This is what they asked for?”

“All is prepared as to their instruction, as you asked, Goodlady Katriona,” said the foreman. Bal Fret was a heavy man, squat as an ape. He had a broken nose that would honour a pugilist. “I know it’s not my place, goodlady, but I can’t help but thinking this is a bad idea. If my man was to do this then we wouldn’t be doing it this way.” He gestured at the simple moulds of packed sand in wooden frames on the floor. “It’s not right, very primitive, if you get my meaning.” He nervously looked to the Tyn. “You’re needing heavy pressures to do this, keep the glimmer from reacting.”

“You have never manufactured anything like this before?” she said. The roar of the air pumps to the furnace were growing louder, and the heat intensified. The bricks that made its side radiated an increasingly fierce heat.

“We tried, a few years back, under Horras Morthrock. He was always a one for new techniques, but it didn’t work. Damn near blew out the whole of foundry three when it went off. We used a float of molten lead to keep it under weight, three tons of it, and it still wasn’t enough. The rods we got were next to useless.”

“That is the technique Kollis and Son use.”

“Yes, goodlady.” Some of the men couldn’t get their minds around the idea that a woman would know about such things. Fret was not among them. “But they’ve got the more experience, patented processes. It’s all too dangerous this modern technique. I’d stick with pure glimmer rods. The power yield is lower, and you need a magister, but they ain’t too hard to come by.”

“My brother was nearly killed by Kollis and Son’s bad engineering. Tyn Lydar assures me they have their own methods. They will work.”

Fret looked down at the five Tyn waddling around the foundry floor with a mix of fear and dislike. “That they do. But they aren’t the methods we should be using.”

“I’m not wanting to crack the stone with dropped words, goodlady. But I do agree a little with Goodman Fret here.” Ras Tynman jangled his keys. A huge iron hoop, with two hundred tiny keys upon it. The tool and the badge of the Tyn’s human overseers. “So, I am not saying I won’t be doing as you’re asking, but I got to say, are you absolutely sure about this, Goodlady Kat?” Tyn Lydar had started calling her that. The habit was spreading to the rest of the mill. “I seen the Tyn do some marvellous things in my time. But uncollaring them, it goes against all the warnings.”

“Have you ever seen a Tyn harm a human?”

“No goodlady,” said Ras. “And we Tynmans have been Tynmen for centuries.”

“Old tales then,” said Katriona.

“I ain’t never seen them uncollared more than one or two at a time, neither,” said Tynman. “It’s dangerous. There’s wisdom in old tales, if you look at them right, begging your pardon Goodlady Kat.”

“They have given their word. There is nothing more binding upon a Tyn than its own word.”

“I’ve been working with the Tyn for forty years, goodlady,” said Tynman. “The geas they place on themselves are mighty odd sometimes, and you are right, they do stick by them. I’ve never seen one go against a ban put on it that it took on willingly, and when I asked them what’d happen if they were to do that, they go all shuffly and evasive, if you see.”

Kat smiled. “I know exactly what you are talking about.”

“The job of Tynman has been handed down to me from my family line from lost gods knows when. And I ain’t never taken their collars off.” He stepped forward, still jangling his keys in his hand.

“No. I expected not.”

“It reminds me of something my old dad said once, not long before he died. He said to me one night, when I was just about done with my prenticing to him and Galvan Melsby over at the high farms out past the city. You know what he said to me, my old dad?” Ras reached for the key slot in the iron of Tyn Lydar’s collar. “He said, ‘If their geas are so mighty strong, why is it we make ’em wear iron collars?’”

The key snapped into the lock. Ras pulled the iron ring away from Tyn Lydar’s neck. She shuddered. A half-smile of pleasure crossed her face. She stood taller, drew breath that somehow inflated her.

Her eyes slid open, there was a light in them that raised the hairs on the back of Kat’s neck. She gave Katriona a sly look. “Thank you, goodlady.”

For a moment, Katriona was sure she had been tricked, and that some terrible peril was imminent. Her heart hammered in her chest. Then Tyn Lydar broke eye contact and called to the foundrymen. “Fill the crucibles!” she shouted. The gates in the walls were opened with long hooked poles held in heavily gloved hands. Bright orange iron roared down chutes, hissing and spitting as it fell into the crucibles, flames sheeting from the flow. They stirred the room with hellish breezes, and Kat ducked behind her shield.

“’Ware!” called Fret.

The gates were sealed. The foundrymen ran to the metal and began raking the skin of impurities from the cooling surface The crucibles were shaped like cauldrons with exceptionally narrow necks, the better to slow the setting of the metal.

“Release the others,” said Katriona to Tynman.

“Are you sure?” he said. He fingered his keys, unsure.

“Do it now!” said Katriona. “Before the metal cools.”

“Right you are.” Tynman went to the collars of the other three Tyn. Like Tyn Lydar, they appeared to physically swell when their collars were removed.

“You should go, Goodlady Kat. This is a tricky job, and no mistake. Things will get uncomfortable. Goodman Fret there wasn’t wrong about the pressure, if you do it the kado way. We has our own way of doing this procedure, is all,” said Tyn Lydar.

“I have to stay, you understand.”

“Then stay behind your shield, Goodlady Kat. You will be safe enough there.”

Kat made herself smaller behind the curved steel shield. The layer of glass distorted her view. Through it she saw the four Tyn moving rapidly. A mix of glimmer sand, adulterated with silver iodide, was shovelled into the sand moulds upon the floor. The crucibles were wheeled forward.

The Tyn broke into song. Sudden and powerful, no prelude sounded, no gentle seduction of notes for the senses, they entered the song in the midst of its singing. The force of it was as strong as the wall of heat from the metal. She flinched.

The door banged open. A figure ran through, throwing up his arm across his face against the heat. A foundryman caught his arm and guided him to Katriona’s shelter.

“Demion! What are you doing here?”

He was panting, red-faced. “This is still my factory. What the hell is this I hear about uncollared Tyn running loose?”

“They are not running loose!” said Katriona. “They are working their full ability upon a project that will net us a great profit.”

“No money is worth this risk.”

“That is why you are lousy at making money away from the card table,” she said. “You don’t agree?”

“No,” said Demion Morthrock, dangerously close to anger. “Absolutely not.”

“I thought you said that you trusted me, husband?”

“I did, but this... Katriona, this is insane!”

“Maybe it is, but you are too late. Watch.”

She made room for him behind the slit, and he bent down to look through it, her hair brushing his face.

The iron, incredibly, flowed slowly into the moulds, arrested by some force of magic. White light shone from each of the six holes in the sand.

Light blazed intensely from the Tyn, subduing the ruddy orange of the molten iron. The sound of a hammer beating iron on an anvil rang out, once, twice, thrice, although there was nothing of the like in the casting room. The ringing took up a steady beat with the song. Huge, glowing figures towered over the Tyn. Their bodies became indistinct shadows within these phantoms of light, their heads and limbs attenuated, until they were reduced to a dark smear, a suggestion of corporeality. The light shone brighter and brighter, swallowing the Tyn entirely, and bleaching out the room. Demion shaded his eyes with his hands, screwed them shut and cried out in pain. The men turned away from the sight, arms over their faces. Ras Tynman reached out for one of the figures, collar in hand, but fell back, overcome by its radiance. Katriona pulled down goggles hurriedly to protect her own eyes. With this additional protection, she could see little. Singing in the bubbling language of the Morthrocksey Tyn cleaved the air, the words trailing streaks of golden light. The pressure in the room greatened, her ears popped, then began to hurt.

“What have you done, Katriona?” demanded Demion. The song and hammering deafened them both. The foundrymen staggered as if hammerstruck. Three fled the room, Tynman lay curled on the floor, his hands clapped over his ears.

A boom, as of a thunderclap at close quarters, or the discharge of a cannon. Katriona fell backwards. Demion caught her clumsily. He too was off balance and they fell tangled together.

She opened her eyes, the singing had stopped. The pressure was dropping noticeably, her ears popped again. She disentangled herself from Demion’s limbs, and stood.

The foundrymen cowered against the walls. Four titans of light, brilliant angels, looked down on her with pupilless eyes.

One shining being stepped toward them, holding a pair of tongs that gripped a long, dark bar. A second step, and a third, and he was Tyn Lorl again. He bowed low, holding the iron rod, twice his height, without any apparent difficulty. The rod smoked. Motes of glimmer glowed all over it.

“Goodlady Kat, I present to you the first rod.”

“Might I take it?”

Tyn Lorl nodded. “It will be cool enough.” There was a wild light in his eyes and a hardness to his face that had been absent while he was collared. But he was eager she be pleased, she saw that, and that lessened the threat she instinctively felt from him.

Kat reached out. She took the rod in her hands. It was hot, the tamed fire inside it making itself felt through the thick leather of her gloves.

She held it up, ran her eyes over it appraisingly. Fret came forward, shaking off the after effects of the Tyn’s work.

“What do you think?” she said.

Fret held out his hands. Katriona handed the rod to him. He examined it closely from all angles.

“I’m no expert in this type of metallurgy, goodlady, but it looks perfect.” He sighted one eye down the length of it. “Absolutely perfect.”

“Stable?”

“If it weren’t, what with all that heat and all, it would’ve blown us all into the afterlife being made like that.” He handed it back to Katriona. The silver of the containment matrix was becoming defined, a honeycomb pattern. At the heart of each cell was a single point of starlight. A mote of glimmer, shining with ready power.

“What are you doing, Katriona?” asked Demion.

“It’s for my brother,” she said. The rod was beautiful. She smiled at the Tyn. For all their wildness, they grinned bashfully.

“Trassan? The ship man?”

“Yes.”

“Well. Well I’m glad it went off alright, that’s all I can say. And I’m glad it’s all done and finished.”