His breath through his nostrils, when he finally exhaled, was acid. Vand despised anxiety even more than inexactitude. At that moment, therefore, he despised himself the most.
“You say he is probably dead.” Vand pulled the paper tighter, reading the short report on it again. “You are not certain he is dead.”
Two men were in front of his desk. Goodman Robar Filden stood ramrod straight. The man had never shaken off his military past. Such habits as the army had drummed into him were both useful and irritating to Vand. Filden kept his gaze fixed over Vand’s head, as if he were permanently waiting for a dressing down from a superior officer. His pale, scarred face was studiously blank. He looked old and weak, but Filden was anything but. Magister Hissenwar was forged from different steel, and managed to look simultaneously sympathetic and nervous. He had a broad, worrisome prospect, like an owl, features that were uncanny despite their complete blandness. He annoyed Vand more than Filden, although they were in good company. Nearly everyone and everything annoyed Vand. Nothing went fast or far enough for him.
“Convinced he is dead, yes,” said Hissenwar. “Certain, no. Two scheduled sendings from the mage on the Prince Alfra have come and gone without word. We cannot find his etheric signature, which suggests that he is dead, which suggests...” He shrugged, and let the sentence hang.
How on earth this miserable piss streak had gathered the funds to attend the magister’s college confounded Vand. Hissenwar was from the impoverished Three Lands. Two sun scorched islands and a scrubby peninsula in the Ellosantin Sea comprised their territorial extent. A sleepy backwater of goats and smug idiots who prattled on all day about how nice it was.
Hissenwar redeemed himself by being an unusually talented magister. Vand’s temper made no allowance for that.
“What by all the hells does that mean?” demanded Vand.
“We cannot read the ship. We cannot even find it. The ship is a needle. The Southern Ocean enormous. You might as well ask me and my comrades to find a particular goat in Khushashia.”
“There are many goats in Khushashia, but there is only one iron ship, Hissenwar,” snorted Vand.
“There are many hundreds of thousands of square leagues of water,” explained Hissenwar patiently.
Vand felt ashamed. Another emotion he hid. Hissenwar was handling this well. Vand was not. What could he expect? Trassan Kressind was... He was...
He is dead, thought Vand. That is what he is. The report was clear on the page before him. Hope tormented him; he turned it upon his men as anger.
The only outward sign of Vand’s upset was a slight lessening of the deep frown. Too subtle for his employees to notice.
“Have you tried the site of the city?” he asked gruffly.
“Achieving an accurate sending to the Morfaan city before was hard, Goodman Vand. You will recollect that we could never approach too closely in spirit form.” Hissenwar spread his hands. His fingers were stained with ink. “And regrettably, something has occurred there. Our rituals can no longer summon sufficient energy to get us close.”
“What about your machines?”
“They are no help. It has become harder.”
“How much harder?”
“Harder, as in impossible,” said the magister apologetically.
“So,” said Vand, laying the message upon his blotter and smoothing it flat. “You extrapolate, without evidence, from this phenomenon that you cannot descry correctly, that Trassan Kressind is dead.”
“My lord,” said Hissenwar more forcefully. “The Prince Alfra is missing. For all we know it is at the bottom of the sea. There is an enormous amount of magical flux present on the Sotherwinter continent that simply was not there before. From the distance we could astrally approach to, we see an immense column of steam rising from the city’s site. In my opinion, Goodfellow Kressind attempted to activate the machines there without proper precautions. He was a fine engineer, but he had no magisterial training, and he was impetuous. I—”
“How dare you!” Vand shot to his feet, his face flushing red. He held out an accusatory finger. Filden arched an eyebrow at him. Vand took breath, and reigned in his rage. “How dare you,” he repeated without shouting. “Trassan Kressind may not have your particular, limited gifts, but he is a thousand times the engineer you will ever be. Do you hear me?”
“Goodman, you must appreciate—”
Vand’s fragile hold on his emotions broke. “I said, do you hear me?” he bellowed. A delayed warmth followed by a throbbing pain informed him he was pounding his fist upon the table so hard it hurt. So this is grief. The analytical part of Vand that never slept, that was both his curse and his genius, catalogued his pain, pinning it down like an entomologist’s sample.
Damn you, Vand thought. “I pay you for facts, not opinions. Get me more facts. Approach this like the rationalist you proclaim yourself to be. No more witch’s mumblings about bad portents or shrouding veils.”
“Goodman, I assure you our machines are built to the most stringent rationalist principles. We are empiricists, not witch doctors. We operate at the limit of their—”
“One day, goodmagister,” Vand interrupted again, “I am going to examine your machines. I am sure I shall uncover their numerous weaknesses in short order. After improving them, I am going to put you out of a job. Do you hear? What am I paying you for?”
“Magical engineering is not as straightforward as what you may think,” said Hissenwar.
“Permit me to disagree with you,” said Vand. “Trassan Kressind could manage it despite his supposed lack of talents,” he finished pointedly.
Hissenwar blinked at him.
“I don’t care how much money you have to spend fixing your gods-damned remote sending apparatus, or how many lesser magisters you exhaust operating them, find me Trassan Kressind!”
“Goodman,” said Hissenwar, whose shell of confidence had been stripped away to nothing by Vand’s verbal assault. “You must understand—”
“No goodmagister, you must understand,” said Vand, stabbing his finger at Hissenwar. “That I am paying you to do a very specific task for me. If you cannot, then I will be forced to replace you.”
“Goodman—”
“Out!” roared Vand.
Hissenwar bobbed his head submissively, nearly tripping on his robes as he left the room. Vand glared hard at the door after it had shut.
“Incompetent. What am I paying these fools for?”
“Goodman,” said Filden, who expected Vand’s robust admonishment every day, and was therefore better placed to take it. “This whole venture was a risk. We were prepared for failure. This outcome was foreseen.”
For failure, yes, thought Vand. But to lose Trassan. I have no sons, he nearly confessed. He was my successor. Can’t you see? My son is dead!
If he spoke aloud he would have spat those words like bullets, but thinking them weakened his rage immensely, and he sat heavily into his chair, diminished by loss, wrung out by despair.
“This is a damned catastrophe, Filden,” he said quietly. There was a bowl full of Morfaan silver beads on his desk next to the apples. Vand picked one up and rolled it between thumb and forefinger, letting its grooves rub upon the ridges of his fingerprints.
Filden saw this moment of introspection, and made an error. “Goodman, if we had a mage on the staff rather than only magisters—”
“Very good!” barked Vand. “We do not have a mage on the staff, do we? Despite my repeated orders that you, Filden, should find one for me!”
Filden’s aquiline features did not shift. He kept his eyes fixed on the painted ceiling of the office throughout. It was a good survival mechanism. “Goodman Vand, as you are aware—”
“I am aware I have asked you to do something for me, and you have not done it! Trassan secured himself one, Persin has one, and yet I, the greatest living engineer in Ruthnia, must do without! Fucking hells, Filden! Our best magister, our only mage, the gods-damned scion of Iapetus, and the chie
fs of our damned Tyn all on the same boat, and you tell me you’ve lost them? Where does this leave our magical capabilities?” His hand tightened suddenly around the silver ball. His fingers stood out white.
Filden sighed coolly. Vand read him easily. He had no gift of magic, but he was a fine judge of men. Filden was thinking it was he, Vand, who had lost them, his gamble; that Vand had indulged Trassan’s plan from greed. He had exploited his protégé’s knowledge, given him all the risk and taken more than his share of the credit. All this was true. Vand could not deny it.
Vand waited while Filden calculated whether to tell the truth and potentially lose his job, or be the lickspittle Vand paid him to be. It was all so despicable, this relationship of master and servant. Vand couldn’t help but abuse it. He tested his men as much as his machines, and always to destruction.
Filden opted for honesty. Vand admired him for that.
“They are lost, Goodman Vand. I am sorry.”
“Then make sure Hissenwar finds them,” hissed Vand. The wave of anger past, the deeps of grief beckoned again. More waves would come, until then, there were long moments of cold despair ahead. He uncurled his fingers. The Morfaan silver gleamed insolently at him, revelling in its secrets.
A half-minute went by. Filden cleared his throat. “What about your trip to the Sisters’ Barrens, Goodman?”
Vand sighed deeply. “I am not four hours off the train from Macer Lesser, Filden. I have been harried from land to land by the necessities of business, and now you give me this fine news.”
“You are not going then, Goodman Vand?”
“No, no. I am. You see, I can handle this amount of responsibility, Filden. It is only when I am let down by the likes of you that I find myself under intolerable pressures. I may delay a week or two, but I will be heading north soon. Guider Zeruvias is still agreeable to accompanying me?”
Filden nodded. “He is.”
“Good. Pay him half his fee up front. He is beginning to get cold feet about it, I can tell.”
“He has made no representation to us about his unwillingness to travel, Goodman.”
“I am Arkadian Vand. I know, Filden. Give the man his money. One disaster cannot be allowed to unsettle all one’s enterprises. If the debacle at the Thrusean steelworks taught me anything, it taught me that.”
I let Trassan have his own way too much. I should have reigned him in. He thought I indulged him to exploit him, thought Vand. It was more than that.
“Should we inform the Kressinds of this incident?” asked Filden.
Vand shook his head. “Having Gelbion Kressind breathing down my neck right now would be inconvenient.”
“The news will out eventually.”
“I’ll prepare something,” said Vand. “But let’s try to avoid telling them until we are sure.”
Vand lapsed into silence, hypnotised by the silver.
“Goodman?” Filden risked a glance at his employer. “Is there anything else?”
I almost loved him, thought Vand. He reminded me of myself.
Vand shook his head slowly, his reddening eyes still fixed upon the silent silver ball. Just do your job. All of you, do your damned jobs.” Vand dropped the ball of Morfaan silver into a glass vase where it rattled hollowly. He had been certain Trassan would find a reader at the city. Now he was no closer to unlocking the mysteries of the damned things than he was before. Back to square one. “Send Veridy in on your way out. She’s been waiting long enough.”
Filden bowed his way out of the door.
Vand snatched up a decanter of fortified Correndian wine.
“Curse you Trassan, and your inability to keep yourself alive,” he said, and poured himself two days’ worth of wine into one goblet. Vand was not a bibulous man, measuring out each drink with an engineer’s precision. There were always exceptional days.
He pushed the message under a stack of paper. His daughter must hear the news from his mouth, and not read it before he had chance to speak. She would have to be lied to. He had to give her some hope, or the Kressinds would be banging on his gate.
The door was opened by one of his servants. Veridy was outside. Her eyes and nostrils were red with weeping. Vand could have stood, and held her, and told her how much her fiancé had meant to him, and that he felt that he had lost a son, but he did not. Arkadian Vand did not show weakness.
Instead he put on his most sincere and stern fatherly expression and laced his fingers together. Let her weep for them both when he could not.
Veridy came forward with the leaden step of the condemned. Her expression broadcast her foreknowledge. If misery were personified, it would have had her face.
“Sit down my dear,” Vand said gently. “I am afraid I have some very bad news.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Another Breakfast at the Morthrocks
DEMION MORTHROCK CAME to breakfast a happy man.
Contrast the situation of eight months previously, when there was froideur at the table, as the Maceriyans say. And now, there are flowers and open curtains through which streams golden sunshine.
He smiled broadly and sat himself at the table. Mornings brought him pleasure. Katriona was still dressing, and he looked forward to their morning talk. She had such passion for the things he did not. He found everything about her adorable, but he had surprised himself by how much he respected her fervour for industry. Despite his father’s lifelong efforts, he had no interest in engines, manufacturing or economics. Katriona did. He had thought, when she took over his factory, that he would let her get on with it, but her being interested had made him interested, and for the first time in his life.
“Love is as strange thing,” he said, and unfolded the broadsheet.
“I’m sorry, goodfellow?” said the maid, Laisa, who was setting out breakfast on the sideboard.
“Nothing, nothing, my dear. Only that the day is a good one. Karsa’s smogs have been blown away to sea, and the sun is shining!”
The maid laughed at his gaiety. The Morthrock house had become a much happier place since Katriona arrived. Laisa left with a smile, and he stood to choose his meal.
Demion’s cook had prepared a fine spread. Of all the things his father had left him, the cook was his favourite. He had little time for factories, but food—Demion hungrily surveyed the silver bowls of scrambled eggs, sausage, devilled kidneys and fried bread— Demion liked food. Almost as much as he liked wine, though not quite so much as he liked gambling.
However, what he loved the most in the world was Katriona, and to his great joy, she had taken to him. He had proposed to her not expecting her to say yes; when she had, he had expected a satisfactory life as a martyred husband, quietly adoring his wife at a remove. He did not deserve what he had. She gave him her heart, and he could not quite believe his luck.
There was no point in judging himself harshly. The world had given him all he wished for. Whether he deserved it or not, he intended to enjoy it before it was taken away (a fear that plagued him in the small hours, as it does all men approaching their middle years). He dug his spoon into the dish of eggs, then slowed. He looked at his belly. Katriona had taken to patting it teasingly. He supposed he had become a little fat. Reluctantly, he let half the food slip back into the bowl.
“This won’t do,” he sighed. “I will have to tell the cook to cut down on the portions.” He thought a moment. “Which I shall. Until then, it would be a shame to let all this go to waste.” He spooned the eggs back onto his plate, and after another moment of thought, added a spoonful more.
He ate the eggs quickly, before Katriona arrived. By the time she entered the breakfast room, he had polished off eggs, kidney, sausage and sweet cake, and was well engrossed in the racing pages of the broadsheet.
Katriona came in quietly and greeted him with a kiss upon his head that made him shiver. She smelled delightful, like freshly pressed cotton.
“You really are the most beautiful woman in all the Hundred,” he said.
She
swatted him on the shoulder. “Thank you, but less of that. If I wished for a puppy I’d go to the dray master.”
“Of course,” he said bashfully. He removed all but the sporting pages of his paper, folded them, and held them up to her.
Taking them, she sat with a small sigh and the rustle of skirts. She appeared more tired than usual. Demion wished she would take things a little easier.
“You have your meeting this evening?” he said carefully, so as not to appear judgemental. Any suggestion from him that she slow down would be harshly received.
“Mmm hm,” she said distractedly. “I have a few more manufacturers to see. I have high hopes for Bwidlen, he seems such a warm-hearted fellow. He cares for his workforce, he really does.” She bit into a crust of toast, brushing the crumbs that pattered onto the broadsheet away. “It really is quite outrageous, this whole affair. The truths of my opinion are self-evident. If we do not afford better rights to the workers, then they will stop working. We have been on the sharp end of that at the Morthrocksey Mill. It would be best if the labour movement is given proper leadership from the beginning, so that it can grow to the mutual benefit of employer and employee. Who knows where it will end if we are not involved? Riot, misery, and worse! I do not see how the others miss it. They are greedy, blinded by money.” She stuffed the remainder of the toast into her mouth. “Speaking of greedy, I am famished today.” She lifted the lid of the silver bowl containing the kidneys, a bowl Demion Morthrock had assiduously covered to hide the amount he had consumed. Strongly scented steam billowed from them. “Are these goat kidneys?” she asked.
Demion frowned. “They are. You do not like them my dear. You do not like the smell.”
She smiled at him and said with mock seriousness, “Then maybe it is time I tried them. If I cannot bring myself to sample a new food every day, how am I to convince the other captains of industry to change their entire way of doing things? Besides, today they smell delicious.” She ladled a good portion onto her plate and set to work with relish.
The Brass God Page 3
