Chasm of Fire

by Michael Wallace

  Thiego’s cabalists, sent to investigate the cause of the riot, had reported the truth. The dumbre weren’t rioting out of anger that the upper terraces were taking their privileges and establishing a new base for the city watch. Instead, the disturbance was rooted in fear of the Basdeenian dynamic fire. They were simply afraid that strange magic would catch the lower terraces on fire and burn the dumbre alive.

  Once Thiego started calling the dynamic fire electricity instead, the unrest eased to a simmer. Further explanations about the benefits of the ancient magic—lights, heat, and dynamos to grind wheat and pump water—eased the fears of all but the most skeptical.

  Now, Carbón was surprised to witness the sheer scale of the work up close. The same massive labor effort that had secured the Great Span to the far side of the Rift was now employed in building what was essentially a new city in the lower terraces. Lady Mercado’s vision was coming to pass.

  The granite block climbed above the edge of the cliff, to where a work crew waited to receive it on a small terrace cut into the cliffside. Lozada, Carbón’s chief engineer, was on hand, and directed the granite block to be swung into a position where it could subsequently be cut into smaller pieces. There was a good deal of noise and dust in the area, and Carbón stayed clear as the engineer shouted at his foreman and workers.

  The operation worked around the clock. In addition to stone, the Basdeenian crane hauled up gravel dredged from the river and lumber from the new sawmill, and judging by Lozada’s yelling and cursing, he was anxious to get the granite block unchained so he could get his machinery back into action.

  Only five weeks remained until the Festival of Fools, after which work would slow to a crawl as the penance weeks sapped vitality from the city. Soon after that, winter would bring its own challenges. They needed to wrap up the roadwork before then, or the Wood Road would be unusable until spring, and then the dumbre would have a legitimate complaint. Other projects had a longer horizon.

  While Carbón was still waiting for Lozada to finish unloading the granite, he spotted Iliana picking her way down a new staircase that was being cut into the cliff face by workers with picks, chisels, and hammers. She was light on her feet, and he envied her energy. He wasn’t that many years older than his chancellor, but she seemed almost of a different generation at the moment, with so many worries weighing on his shoulders.

  “Did you know?” she asked breathlessly, after she’d found him overlooking the work site. “You must have. That was what you were talking about in the spring, wasn’t it?”

  He allowed himself a smile. “Is this a cabalist trick to weasel information out of me? What exactly are you referring to?”

  “Lady Mercado! And Thiego!”

  “Ah.”

  “It’s . . . I don’t know what to think. His mother? My God, that explains so many things.”

  “So she finally told him,” he said. “Any idea how Thiego took the news?”

  “He was stunned. He’s still stunned. And apparently she’s going to acknowledge him publicly,” Iliana added, “but isn’t going to leave him either title or inheritance. Her older children waiting their turn in the Forty would have something to say if she did, I suppose. To be honest, I think he’s relieved—moving to the Quinta isn’t something that ever appealed to him.”

  “Thiego is busy enough in the Luminoso without grasping for a place in the Quinta.”

  To be honest, Carbón was relieved, as well. Concentrating even more power in Mercado’s family would be dangerous. This was a time to weaken the city’s ruling classes, not strengthen them.

  “Who else knows?” he asked.

  “So far as I’m aware, only you, Mercado, Thiego, and now me.”

  “So you were the first one he told.”

  Iliana’s expression became more guarded. He waited for her to continue, to affirm the suspicion that had been growing in his mind for the past several months, but she didn’t, and so he gave her another prod.

  “You’ve become awfully close,” he said. “Working together, even when it doesn’t seem strictly necessary. And now sharing confidences. Do you have some sort of understanding? You do, don’t you?”

  The guarded expression turned into something like guilt. “I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  Carbón put a hand on her arm and warmth into his voice. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. However . . . well. Hmm.”

  “I was hoping you’d . . . that is, I want you to approve. It means so much to me that you do.”

  “Thiego is a good man, and I’m sure in the long run you’ll be plenty happy. That’s not my concern.” He shook his head. “Point is, he has no income, only the offerings of the temple. Food and a cold stone room in which to sleep. Whatever coin he earns on the side is to pay his offerings. That leaves you, and your wage is barely enough to keep your parents out of poverty, let alone support a husband.”

  “I know, believe me. We’ve talked it over.”

  “And what about the Forty custom? You’re supposed to welcome your first child within eighteen months of marriage. You’ve got to mark your place in the hierarchy.”

  Here, Iliana actually winced. “That’s an old custom, and pointless. I thought with the barriers breaking down and the risk of being sent down less . . . I figured maybe we could hold off for a while. We’re both young—there’s plenty of time.”

  “Go ahead and convince your parents if you can. But I imagine they’ll become suddenly conservative on the matter. Suddenly have a dozen reasons why the traditions must be maintained in order to give them a grandchild.”

  “But what can we do? We haven’t got a spare escudo between us. It could take years to change that. Are you saying we shouldn’t get married?”

  “Not if you can’t afford it, no.” Carbón allowed himself a smile. “But supposing I could help? Ten extra escudos a month would probably tide you over.”

  Iliana’s eyes widened. “You’d do that?”

  “I said supposing I could help. Then of course I would, but I can’t. I’m far too short on funds—it takes every penny just to keep this work going and to maintain the bare minimum of staff on my estate. Maybe next year, if you could wait that long.”

  Her face fell, though surely she’d known the state of his finances, given that she saw the ledgers on a daily basis. Maybe she’d supposed that he kept a chest of gold quintas buried in the garden for emergencies. He didn’t.

  Iliana let out her breath. “A year . . . that’s not so long, I suppose. You really don’t think there’s any other way?”

  “There’s a way, it just doesn’t involve crossing your palm with silver.” Carbón gave an exaggerated shrug. “For example, the two of you could live on my estate and take your meals with me in the manor. Then you wouldn’t need money.” Carbón laughed at the dumbfounded expression on her face. “Unless you’d rather wait it out. I’m sure in the long run you’d find the coin to make it work.”

  She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. He grinned with pleasure at the results of his teasing. This had been coming for several months—perhaps even since the day of their descent into the Rift, when Iliana and Thiego’s friendship had been obvious and growing—and he’d long ago worked out how to help the young couple should they declare their intent to marry.

  A shout from Lozada drew his attention back to the work site below them. The granite block was free and the engineer was swinging the crane boom about to lower the hoist line back into the Rift, but there were men in the way, and at risk of being injured by swinging chains, which had Lozada in a lather. He was going to ruin his voice if he kept shouting like that.

  They needed a second crane, that’s all there was to it. But the Basdeenians charged dearly for their machinery, and the lords of the Quinta were already spending coin as fast as it arrived. With time, of course, the greater and greater quantities of electricity being pulled out of the Rift would pay for all of it, but it seemed that the work could increase at a more rapi
d clip if Quintana figured out a way to pay for Basdeenian goods over time, just as Grosst and her guilds bought the electricity as it flowed instead of all at once.

  The changes were immense across the economy, the government, and technology. They needed schools to teach people, new layers of men and women who could manage those working closer to the ground. A formal system to train and organize. Already, the system had grown too complex for Carbón to understand, and it was growing more complicated by the day.

  Nevertheless, the big picture was emerging. Thousands of new people streamed toward Quintana from Basdeen, Diana, the Cheksapa, and even the Scoti homelands, and together they were forming the foundations of what would become the Fourth Plenty. Its final shape was unknown, but it was said that the Elders organized cities counted not in thousands or hundreds of thousands, but in the millions. Imagining such a future was thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

  Maybe it would be too much. Maybe human civilization, when advancing past a certain level, grew so complex that it ultimately spiraled out of control and collapsed. Numerous dangers could deliver the final blow—war, famine, resource exhaustion—but the true culprit might be that humans pushed so much of their labor onto miraculous machines and devices that they forgot how to sustain themselves when the shock inevitably hit.

  Carbón worried that even with the gift of the Elders’ furnace in the Rift, the Fourth Plenty might prove a single flash of light and heat, only to be rapidly extinguished. The next collapse, when it came, might be the final one.

  No. He refused to accept that. Civilization had failed three times before, but that didn’t mean it was ordained for there to be a fourth collapse.

  This time will be different, Lord Carbón swore as he followed Iliana’s gaze to study the tearing apart and rebuilding of the lower terraces. This time we know. This time we will be prepared.

  -end-

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