"No, my lord."
"Nor have I, though it has the reputation of a hardship post, especially in the winter when the storms rage across the peninsula without letup. A year there is like five anywhere else, they say."
"Aye, my lord."
"There should be a squadron of war galleys there, a troop of marines, and the 23rd Barracks Legion."
"Aye, my lord."
Ghorn gave up. "Take my compliments to the Captain and ask that he meet with me at his first opportunity."
"Aye, my lord."
They arrived off Steel Point within half a fortnight, covering some three hundred leagues on a more or less direct course. Bells in the fifteen-manheight lighthouse set to clanging when the skyship passed overhead and the expansive fortress swarmed with activity as the garrison turned to. Within the breakwater of the small harbor, the galleys ran out oars and made for the open sea. Watching the legionnaires below scramble along the uncovered battlements of the massive pile of the octagon-shaped brick and stone construction, Ghorn realized that the newly dawned age of skyships had made such bastions indefensible.
While Captain Brhendhisg brought down the sails and hove to, Ghorn had Fugleman Hraval use signal flags to contact the leader of the garrison, Commander zh'Kien.
The officer was less than welcoming.
Ghorn, reading the flags of the reply, interpreted, "What proof have you to present that you are indeed Prince-Commander Ghorn?"
"Hraval, send this sequence: red, blue, yellow, red, red, blue, red, green, green, yellow, red."
"I acknowledge the command code of the Principate Council of War. Honor requires me to inform you that I have received orders from the Senate to arrest on sight any and all rebels. The order includes a list of names, with your own at the top."
"Send this, 'Do you intend to obey this unlawful order?"
"That remains to be seen."
Ghorn mulled this for a moment then told Hraval, "Station two quads of crossbowmen at the rail. Have them target the cliffs below the walls. Then send this, 'We sail under the authority of Prince Davfydd and King Mar and have at our disposal the power of magic and the sanction of the Gods. All who aide the enemy shall be shown no mercy."
As soon as the flags had completed the message, Ghorn ordered the waiting crossbowmen to fire. The enchanted spheres flew and the near simultaneous detonations fractured the cliff and sent a great landslide crashing down into the now empty harbor. The noise of the blasts was painful to the ears even at the altitude of the Prince Davfydd and for some seconds the fortress, except for the tallest part of the lighthouse, was totally obscured by dust and flying debris.
The next communication from Commander zh'Kien was more accommodating. "We stand ready to obey the lawful authority of the Prince-Commander."
THIRTY-EIGHT
It actually took Mar a full eight days to secure a building to hide Number One. Not having put much thought to it, he had believed that it would be a simple matter of wandering along the Emperor's Highway, which cut through many of the commercial sections of the Lower City, until he came upon a likely candidate.
On the first morning, he confidently led his Mhajhkaeirii from the inn, automatically choosing the most direct path to the Highway. With easy familiarity, he followed zigzagging routes along side streets, passed without hesitation through unlocked though closed gates, vaulted low fences as needed, detoured down cluttered alleys and across back lots green with vegetable gardens, and took brazen short cuts through the dark breezeways of musty row houses. Efficient travel through the warrens of the Lower City was a skill that he had hardly forgotten in only a few fortnights.
What he had not considered, however, was that where one, often bedraggled, young Khalarii would hardly have drawn a second glance from the denizens of those side streets, alleys, back lots, and row houses, a foreign merchant and his fully armed, clattering retinue could not fail to do so. The marines presented too foreboding of an appearance for any of the matrons, skulking children, or instantly suspicious householders to accost them, but they did receive startled stares, resentful glares, muffled curses, and once were nearly soaked by a bucket of (what he at least hoped was) wash water thrown from a balcony. The large, hirsute woman who flung the missile looked at them as if they were some sort of infestation. Jarred to the realization that carelessly falling back upon old habits from his life in the Imperial City was a mistake that he must make a rigorous effort to avoid, he abandoned his accustomed tramp at a snaking street known as Victory of Glaegmon at its western terminus and Swamp End at its eastern and traced a considerably longer path of open, well-traveled streets the rest of the way westward.
Like the rest of the city, the Emperor's Highway was just as he remembered it.
And, then again, it seemed entirely transformed.
Physically, almost nothing had changed. Khalar's age and urban density decreed that almost no new construction could take place except on its outskirts; older buildings were renovated, repurposed, salvaged, or just allowed to decay. Most of the larger edifices -- factorages making glass, textiles, or metal goods -- were a century old or more, with equal representations of solid stone or brick structures and more flimsy rambling wooden sheds built around an inner frame of stone columns. Some were well maintained, with tight tile roofs and solid mortar or fresh paint, but others looked as if they were only waiting for a stiff wind to push them over.
The transformation had taken place in the reactions of the normal denizens of the avenue, the beggars, the laboring bondsmen and women, the busy factors and tradesmen, the bored patrols of the Viceroy's Guard. The last time Mar had walked down the Emperor's Highway, he had been, in the majority of cases, ignored, or, in the case of the Guard, examined with a keen professional interest and encouraged to be elsewhere.
Today, his apparent status and the armsmen who accompanied him generated wariness, subservience, and the semblance of respect.
A gang of bondsmen unloading a wagon in front of a chandlery bowed heads and moved aside as he approached along the promenade, some stepping down off the curb. A block further, a quad of the Guard, checking beggars' permits at one of the sanctioned alms alcoves, a small rectangle of pavement with a covered shrine to Bhzg'g, straightened as he and the others drew near.
The ceannaire leading the guardsmen bid him an enthusiastic, "Good day, my lord!"
Mar nodded at the armsman perfunctorily, frowning to indicate that he had no time for pleasantries.
As he advanced past the ceannaire and moved toward the end of the alcove, a filthy young girl of no more than ten, missing both her right hand and foot, boldly stumped from the shade of the shrine and stuck out her bowl. Immediately recognizing the nature of the scars, he understood the source of her injuries. Someone, perhaps a parent, had seared off the appendages to make her more suitable for the begging profession. She had no doubt been sold to a fagin. He wondered why she did not also assail him with her memorized tale of woe until she opened her mouth to show that her tongue had also been cut out.
Mar stopped and turned to Ulor. "Drop a few copper in her bowl."
Frowning, the subaltern gazed at the girl for a moment, clearly thinking of his own children. "Sir, couldn't we spare a silver?"
Mar shook his head. "It wouldn't do her any good. Someone would steal the coins from her. Even if she managed to hold on to them, her owner would take it all. A few thay will mean that she gets fed. The fagins starve the ones that don't bring in any coin to make them more pitiful."
Hard-faced, Ulor did as he was bid.
After they left both the beggars and the guardsmen far behind, Mar asked Ulor, "Are the beggars in Mhajhkaei so different?"
"There are -- or were -- no beggars in Mhajhkaei, sir. There was a pension for those with malformations or amputations and charities for the otherwise afflicted. For those who were fit but destitute, the service of the Principate was open to all, man or woman, young or old."
"How about thieves and reprobates?"
"Especially for
those, sir."
While they had passed a few empty buildings on the main avenue, none of them were suitable either in seclusion or size and Mar turned on the next side street, which he knew led through a section of warehouses. By noon, they had had no luck and through the remainder of the day, they walked up one street and down another, but still came across nothing that would do.
The fundamental problem was clearance and angles. While they found a number of empty buildings that both had sufficient span of roof to accommodate Number One and had some measure of seclusion, most faced upon the twisted, narrow lanes that were commonplace in Khalar's unplanned sprawl. To get the skyship inside any of them, he would have had to spit it in half and then practically stand the halves on end.
The second day, after a futile search of several hours, he took the drastic step of inquiring in shops and of passing tradesmen and was directed, generally after a modest remuneration, to various warehouses and derelict factorages. Without exception, these suffered the same faults as all those previously rejected. In one instance, a bondswoman suggested a timber warehouse north of the foundry district, describing it as having an extensive open yard to its front, but on locating the site, they discovered that the building was only a burned out shell.
On the third day, a blacksmith's apprentice guided them to a derelict warehouse near the old upriver fishing docks that had at its front a broad, unencumbered space -- not really a plaza, since the pavement was incomplete and a planned fountain no more than a refuse-filled depression.
The area around the building hosted a varied selection of small cloth mills and compact neighborhoods of dreary, soot stained dwellings. None of the streets were lighted at night, and it was the sort of place where the scant populace barricaded their gates and doors at dusk and did not venture forth again until daybreak, which made it perfectly suited for Mar's clandestine designs.
But it took the better part of a day to find the owner, an elderly widow living in the Old City whose husband had sold wine and spirits on consignment. At first she was interested only in selling the decayed warehouse, even going so far as to offer to float Mar's note, but at his insistence eventually agreed to a short term arrangement with payments due on the fortnight.
The building itself was likely more than three score years old, thrown up during more prosperous times when the economy of the city had swelled due to the demand for metals generated by some forgotten southern border dispute. The lower portions of the outer walls were red brick and the upper shiplap over a post and beam frame. The interior height was five manheight from cracked stone floor to the bottoms of the iron reinforced oak trusses, more than sufficient to accommodate Number One. Some previous tenant had added a shed-roofed extension at the rear and then segregated the space with thin walls of lathe and plaster to make smallish storerooms.
After moving from the inn and establishing quarters in the storerooms on the afternoon of the fourth day, Mar began to take stock of what needed to be done to make the warehouse ready for the skyship. With Ulor and the other marines, he made a round through the building, poking through refuse piles, peering into shadowed corners and alcoves, and taping on beams and walls to judge their soundness.
Winding up at the center of the building, he gestured at the trash-scattered floor and said, "We'll need to get some heavy timbers to build cradles to hold the keel."
Phehlahm pointed at the ceiling. The roof had so many holes that the sunlight beaming through looked like a starry night sky. "It'll take a lot o' work to make that keep off the rain."
"Even if the main door doesn't fall of its hinges, it's not wide or tall enough to let the skyship pass," Ulor judged. "We'll need larger gates."
"None of the other doors is stout enough to be defensible," Chaer chimed in.
"There'd be more light if the glass, what there is of it, of the windows were cleaned," Nehl suggested.
Mar tucked back one corner of his mouth. "The six of us won't be able to get all that done in a reasonable amount of time. We'll have to hire help."
Having originally told Telriy and Quaestor Eishtren that he expected to come for the skyship in only a few days, the next morning Mar sent Phehlahm and Nehl to apprise them of the reason for the delay, cautioning them to travel several leagues south along the Imperial Highway before circling back to Number One. Then, leaving Chaer and E'hve to guard the warehouse, he took Ulor to find a crew of carpenters and laborers. As hiring day laborers off the street would have been out of character for a foreign merchant, he led the subaltern to the Wood Tradesmen's Guild Hall.
On the Promenade of the Blue Fortress, the temple-like building had an impressive portico supported by thirteen granite columns, each inscribed at its base with the name of a god, goddess, or godlet associated with wood, trees, hard work, or, perhaps or perhaps not oddly, bacchanalia. Mar recognized nine of the deities, but he had never heard of the others, and told Ulor to remind him one day to look them up. Open oak doors that were large enough to be fortress gates led into a grand, two-storey foyer whose walls and ceiling were paneled in cherry and cedar, with hand-carved moldings depicting industrious lumberjacks, carpenters, and wood wrights. Tall windows and skylights lit the interior and lamps were unnecessary. Perhaps a dozen men of various ages, all wearing rough work clothes, idled in small groupings, conversing quietly, and several of these glanced with evident interest at the two of them.
Striding with carefully exuded arrogance and with Ulor following at a properly subservient interval, Mar made directly for the island of tables at the center of the foyer and the single attendant, who stood and smiled in greeting. The man was tall, neither thin nor thick, and from the looks of his hands -- he had neither scars nor calluses -- he was not a carpenter.
"Good day to you, sir! I am d'Riael, Chief Clerk of the Guild. How may I be of service?"
Mar gave the man the false name and origin of his merchant persona. "I wish to hire a crew of carpenters and helpers for perhaps three day's work."
"Excellent! How far in advance of today?"
"I need them starting today."
The man's smile diminished a few notches. "I'm sorry, sir. All of our dues paid-up members are engaged at the Viceroy's Library. None of them will be available until a fortnight and a half from today."
Mar glanced around. "What about these men here?"
d'Riael adopted a neutral expression. "These members have been unable to pay their dues in more than three months and under our bylaws cannot be referred for work nor have their craftsmanship indemnified by the Guild."
"But they are available for hire?"
"As laborers only, sir. They may not do any skilled work."
"They are carpenters, though?"
"Not until their dues are paid, sir."
"I see. Very well, I will speak with some of them." Mar did not thank the clerk; that would have been out of character. He made his way to the nearest group. The men, one older, two a couple of decades younger, and one hardly out of his teens, fell silent and turned to face him respectfully.
"Good morning," Mar told them. "My name is Drath. Are you looking for work?"
The older man nodded his head and flashed a quick, friendly smile. "Yes, sir, that we are. Thyrael, at your service, sir."
"You are all carpenters?"
Thyrael's face went rigid. "No, sir. At least, not till we've paid our dues."
"But you have been carpenters in the past?"
"Yes, sir. I was a master carpenter for thirty years until I ... fell on hard times. These are my sons, Gresht and Eaarst, and my nephew Trhisgan. Gresht and Eaarst were both journeyman and Trhisgan was an apprentice."
Mar was quiet for a moment while he studied the four men. It seemed passing strange that all four had been unable to pay their dues at the same time. "All of you have fallen on hard times?"
Thyrael started to speak, stopped with a grimace, and then sighed. "Well, the truth is, sir, that we've all been blacklisted and excluded from our normal work."
"Ah. For what?"
"It was because of me, sir," the apprentice, Trhisgan blurted out, then clamped his mouth shut when Thyrael frowned at him.
Mar needed workmen and the troubles of these Khalarii were no concern of his, but his curiosity got the best of him. "How so?"
"The boy took a liking to a girl, sir," Thyrael grumbled.
"The wrong girl?"
"That would be the gist of it. She's the daughter of a Patriarch's scribe."
"And the father found your nephew unsuitable?"
"Yes, sir."
Mar shrugged. Trhisgan was lucky that the scribe had not had the Viceroy's Guard drop his body in the river. "You have your own tools?"
Thyrael's smile returned. "Of course."
"I need some work done on a building that I have rented. I will pay ten silver per day for the lot of you."
Thyrael's eyebrows rose slightly. "More than generous, sir."
And it was. The normal pay for skilled tradesmen was half that, but Mar felt disinclined to be parsimonious.
"Come with me."
After Mar showed Thyrael and his kin the warehouse and described the work he wanted done, Thyrael told Mar, "I don't doubt that can get all this repaired for you in a fortnight, sir."
"I need it done in a couple of days," Mar countered.
"I'm sorry, Merchant Drath, as much as I'd like to tell you that the four of us could do that, it just isn't possible. Why, it'd take twenty men working from dawn till dusk to --"
"Alright. Get me twenty men."
"I might know that many who need a short job, sir," the carpenter hazarded, "but not all of them would be craftsmen."
"This is not a problem. Get the men. I will pay two and a half silver per man per day, but everything must be finished on time."
"It will be! Have no doubt about that, sir!"
Leaving his sons to work on a list a materials, Thyrael departed with Trhisgan and returned within half an hour with a wagonload of lumber and a troop of what turned out to be friends, neighbors, and assorted relatives, including a number of women. As the carpenters and their helpers began setting up sawbucks, taking measurements, and building scaffolds, Mar noticed that one young woman, who Thyrael had put on a scaffold to clean some of the upper windows, had an out of place look about her. She was not dressed demonstrably differently than the other women, wearing a long skirt and loose blouse of the same cut and material, and worked as enthusiastically, if perhaps less confidently, as the others.
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