“Who else? Quema? Was she?” Gamstadt thought a bit. “Yes, yes she was. She was Ro’s lieutenant at the time. I’d forgotten that. Anyhow, she could have bought a big promotion out of that post, just like Ro, but she didn’t. The Missus always made sure there were plenty of family politics.”
“I need to deliver messages,” stated Maran. That would now include speaking to Quema.
Gamstadt stood, then offered an arm to Maran. In response, Maran stood as well, then reeled. Gamstadt caught her arm.
“Careful, daughter. That kind of thing messes with your head. The Missus never could walk after visiting the Duke.”
“Thanks. Good to know that even she had problems.”
Gamstadt took Maran’s arm into his own. “Just hold on, I’ll walk you back.”
They walked to the door. The guards there opened it to a shock of air and light. Maran blinked into the red-gold evening and a rush of cooling air. She had to wait there as her senses came around, eyes blinking.
When she was ready, Maran stepped forward again.
In the foundry’s yard, the Ironmongers still stood at attention, a long line of armored dwarves with shields standing ready against the mob outside the iron fence. An occasional rock flew in. Many stones littered the yard.
Behind the soldiers, the forge’s human workers all sat on the ground, well spaced, while Horsebreaker women with blunderbusses stood watch with loaded guns. The humans looked tired and thirsty. So did the Horsebreakers.
Maran searched the faces for Annalise or the seamstresses, but spotted none of them. Apparently, Strikke kept them safe upstairs.
Human children played behind their parents. Their play seemed subdued, as most children knew what was going on. Horsebreakers with guns watched them as well, acting as an overt threat encouraging cooperative behavior. They would shoot if asked. None would hesitate. The Ironmongers had strayed far from the Strictures which forbade the killing of children.
“What’s going on?” Maran asked Gamstadt.
“We’re keeping the drifters from helping each other. So, we made our workers sit. If they do anything, we have their children.”
“That’s awful. How can we do that?”
“What’s awful about it? It works. Nobody gets shot that way. It keeps the peace. When it’s all done, they can go back to working.”
“Does the Kurfurstin know about this? What about Altyn?”
“Of course they know. They had the same objections, but they couldn’t offer anything better. If we send those people outside, the rioters might turn on them for cooperating with us. If we leave them unwatched, they might do something stupid. Best if everyone just stays calm.”
Maran still found it awful. How could she work for these Ironmongers?
On top of the guildhall, Maran saw yet more armed Ironmonger women, this time with rifles. They were the sharpshooters. A few women had their rifles at the ready, but most were sitting on the peak and sewing to pass the time. All were stripped down to their underdresses in a bid to stay cool on that hot steel roof, their skirts hems tucked into their waistbands.
Gamstadt spoke as he walked Maran across the stone-strewed yard. “I examined the guard. I personally counted powder cartridges. The front gate guard shot four rounds. There were about ten shots in all, give or take a few. I don’t know who shot those other rounds. That’s baffling.
“The gate guards are in disgrace awaiting trial. Their captain has already gone visiting the White Lady. His body is in the icehouse.” That was a euphamism for suicide and a few other forms of death.
The news saddened Maran. Even if the guard captain had been a Reckoner, he did not deserve that sad fate. At least she did not have to guide his soul, as those killed here should go to the Iron Duke’s forge.
On entering the guildhall, Gamstadt took Maran along to the Kurfurstin’s suite, which Maran had never entered. The doors were now open, and workers seemed busy in there. Strikke must be inside, as Osei stood in the foyer looking profoundly bored.
Osei smiled toward Maran. Where was his laugh? Where was his boatman’s charm?
“How are you doing today?” asked Maran.
“I am wonderful, my friend.” His voice did not match his words.
“No, you aren’t. I miss you. I miss the old you. I think I need to get you out of this job.”
“Of course I need to get out of this job,” laughed Osei, “but I haven’t gotten paid yet.”
“You’ve got to do something about that.”
Gamstadt interrupted, “That’s enough, you two. We keep our words behind closed doors. The rank and file need to see us united. Talk this out later. Now, attend to your elder. Do you have your keys on you?”
Maran reached into her apron and pulled them out.
“Good, now unlock this other door right here. Go on. You want to see this.”
With a stiff snap, Maran turned the lock and pushed. The new opened door revealed a proper Loam-style kitchen. Maran almost melted with ecstasy. The room smelled of heat and dust, being closed for so many years, but it was a real Loam-style kitchen. Copper pots hung neatly on racks, black and green from disuse. Ceramic knives lay neatly where the cook had left them, nicely arrayed. The stove and hearth were covered in tiles and mosaics. There were even little clay statues of the gods stationed above the stove.
Gamstadt patted Maran on the back. “This was Cookie’s kitchen. We closed it up after Cookie died.”
Maran could barely speak. “This is perfect. It’s wonderful. What a perfect kitchen.”
“This is yours. All of it. Whatever you decide to do with this is the right thing. Cookie would give this all to you. Not without a lecture, of course, but she would give it to you.”
“This can’t be mine. It’s too much.”
“Nonsense, and I won’t hear any more of it. It’s the New Year. It’s the time for gifts. Call it an early gift. It’s time for me to move on to new things. Cookie would want this. I want this. Thank me and be done with it.”
“Thank you, Uncle.” Maran kissed him on the cheek.
Gamstadt smiled like a proud father.
“Let’s air this place out,” he responded with cheer. Gamstadt opened a window, then sat in the chair under it. “Still feels right. Ha!” His feet scuffed the red dust where his iron whittling had rusted over the years.
Cookie had let Gamstadt whittle in her kitchen. She must have loved him.
Gamstadt pointed. “We got married on that bench, there. It was a secret marriage, her being a Loam and me being a Lord Protector. We sat before the fire and talked, then agreed that we were married. The hearth and the Lady of Fire witnessed the whole thing. I was a happy man, Maran. We were happy.
“Don’t get me wrong. We did fight. Our morals disagreed. But it was good, and I would do the same again, except for the sneaking around part. For her, I’d be an honest man about it. I’d become a farmer or something, lowly as that might be. Somehow, you people turn farming into hard and backbreaking labor, and that would make any dwarf happy.”
Maran sat down on the bench, contemplating the black and stained hearth, and the iron stove that occupied half of it.
Gamstadt smiled. “Cookie had a bigger nose than you, begging your pardon. It was a mighty sight. She had calloused hands, too, like a smith. What a beautiful woman she was. I can still hear her now, screaming at her assistants as they raced to dinner. She always won. Dinner was always on time and what it should be. I miss that woman.”
It felt odd to be compared to Cookie, but Maran knew that Gamstadt meant well. He was still a man in love.
Taking out his pipe, Gamstadt stopped and looked at it. “Old habits, Maran, old habits. There’s no coals to light my pipe.”
Standing, Gamstadt stretched a little. “There’s a little more to see, then I can send you back to your duties.”
“Yes, sir. That’s right, I have important news.”
“Of course you do, but we’re not done. Come on.”
Gamst
adt opened another door, revealing a circular stairwell. “Servant quarters are down here.”
Maran stood, still feeling dizzy. They walked down the stairs to a narrow passage, equally musty and hot.
“These are the Kurfurstin’s servants quarters. Right here is Cookie’s room. Open up.”
Maran tried several keys until she found the one that worked. Opening the door revealed another dusty and hot room, hosting a plain bed, a sofa, and some comfortable chairs.
“This is yours, too. Everything. The room next door is for your kitchen staff. Cookie used to have a couple girls working for her. Along this hall, there’s rooms for maids, footmen, and a butler.”
Cookie’s room looked perfectly comfortable and cozy while also being modest and simple. It was the very model of Loam decor.
The room also featured a door out the back. Through the door lay an overgrown garden. That would be the cook’s garden, which was gladdening news. Maran would enjoy having her own garden again. The idea of all that impending work made her happy.
The garden itself lay between the concentric rings of the guildhall. From the ground, it was not obvious that the guildhall was really a building wrapped around another, but it was.
“The guildhall is concentric buildings?” Maran asked.
“Yes, it is. The rooms have to get light somehow. We don’t have light tubes, like they do up in the city proper. Can’t get them any more. Stupid embargos.”
Gamstadt took Maran up a different stairwell, bringing her inside the Kurfurstin’s suite.
The suite was a disaster. It looked like the great wind that had torn apart the Steel City had also touched down here. Servants were boxing up a bizarre assortment of strange items, all of which had once belonged to Lord Svero. Based on what she saw, Svero must have packed the room with every interesting curiosity that he ever found. Interestingly, none of it seemed valuable in the least. There was almost no gold or silver, or even gemstones. It was just pottery, wood, books, and such. They were pretty, if not downright beautiful, but not gold.
Strikke was there supervising the installation of her mother’s memorial altar. “It’s about time you two showed. Gammy, what bedroom did you two visit?”
“Cookie’s. Then I showed her around Cookie’s kitchen.”
“I should have known. Maran, I’m hosting my mother’s memorial party on New Year’s Day, after dinner. Prep for two hundred and tap a new cask of sherry. Meanwhile, I have to get this suite decorated. All this work, and I’m still not finished with my dress. I don’t need this. Now I know why they hire people like me.”
Two hundred people? Her kitchen was in no shape to cook for that many people and she had no food ready. Still, it would be her first large party, and the thought of all that prep work excited Maran. This was what her grandmother had trained her for and she could prep for two hundred in her sleep.
Strikke looked up in thought. “There was something else. Hmm. Altyn wants to talk to you about something. She said it was important. Does that woman ever smile? She just sucks the color out of the room. I tell you, we might be the Ironmongers, but she’s the one with a steel rod up her ass.”
“I will go speak with her. May I be excused?”
“Yes, come and go as you need. I can’t get anything done if everyone asks me about every piss.”
As they walked out, Osei fell in behind them.
Down the hall, inside the Kurfurstin Mother’s suite, Maran saw the handiwork of Altyn. She had ordered several tables in and had papers stacked and sorted everywhere.
Gamstadt moved papers off one of the chairs, dropping them the floor with a thump, then sat.
Altyn motioned to Protector Fleck. “Stand in for Osei.” Fleck closed the inner door, then went to protect the Kurfurstin.
After everyone settled, Altyn began the meeting. “Maran, what news from the gods?”
“I took a long trip to visit Justice. She demands a court of hers be established or she will turn her wrath against us. She wants us to erect her idol there. She says that she has one hidden away.”
“Idol? Interesting. Where might it be? Do you have any clues?”
“She said something about Fera Nea. There aren’t many folks who went out that way. Svero might know. Quema might know. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
Altyn nodded. “If it is a true idol, it would be as priceless as an Uma gate. Follow up with Quema, then go to Bertra.”
“What makes them so valuable?” asked Gamstadt. “I don’t know much about that stuff.”
“True idols are made by the gods themselves. Just that makes them quite valuable. It is the holy idol that makes a temple a holy place. Once ensconced, it establishes the power of a god far more strongly in a city, much like a fortress establishes military power in a region. Without an idol, or other sacred relic, all you have is a shrine.”
Altyn leaned back, thinking about a few things. “There are too many implications to think through right now. I can come back to this. Maran, any other information?”
“The Iron Duke fought the Red Lady. He held on, but the damage was pretty bad.”
“Interesting. Go on.”
“There were some humans that escaped Tythia’s justice. They called them featherheads. They are Red Lady cultists. I think that those are the Demmarians that you killed.”
“Interesting. What did they want?”
“I don’t know. I escaped them.”
“Is that all?”
“I can’t think of anything else.”
“Then follow up as you see fit. You need to find that idol. Meanwhile, I will move on to other matters.” Altyn looked at Gamstadt. “I’ve looked at this guild’s production numbers. I doubt what I see. Can you help me to understand them? By my estimates, you are producing over one hundred suits of armor per day. That’s madness. Nobody can do that. That calculates out to ninety thousand suits over the last ten years.”
Gamstadt wiggled. “Yes, those are real numbers, but those numbers are supposed to be secret.”
“Then you had better keep your secrets better. I don’t want to know your secrets.”
Maran was puzzled. “I thought it took a long time to make armor. How do you produce so much?”
Gamstadt considered the secrets, then gave up. He explained, “It used to take a long time to make armor, assuming that you forged it the traditional way. It used to be that you made small amounts of steel, then welded that into a larger piece, eventually making a breastplate or a helmet or something. The work is laborious. You need to make the steel right and not ruin it in all the additional firings.
“We don’t do it that way. We make steel by the ton. We put a hot steel brick into a mold and drop a couple tons on it, forging and shaping the piece in one step. The piece still needs finishing, of course, but the method lets us produce armor at the demonstrated rate.
“We do still make some suits by hand. If you want a hand-made suit, our smiths begin with a sheet of rolled steel. The workers only needs to shape it. No seams. No joins. So even if we forge it by hand, we still make armor faster than the anybody.”
The sheer efficiency of the Ironmonger arms machine stunned Maran. It was no wonder that the Malachites wanted the secrets of steel. The Malachites may have had the people, but the Ironmongers had all the equipment.
Altyn’s next question seemed more important. “What will you do with all that armor?”
“I don’t know. The Missus said to produce armor as fast as possible, so we figured that out. We have no real purpose for it. Once we had enough for the regiment and the other guilds, we concentrated on human armor. We figured we could greatly speed production if we concentrated on helmets, chest pieces, and thigh pieces. We actually have more than a hundred and fifty thousand pieces, and enough pikes and guns to equip a similar number. Don’t ask me why for pikes and guns, that’s just what the Missus said.”
Altyn leaned forward. “You can now equip the largest land army in the world. Are you sure that you have no pl
ans for this?”
“We make and sell steel. What else are we supposed to do? Of course we have enough arms to supply an army. There’s nothing more restless than a bored dwarf. We have to keep ourselves busy somehow.”
“Indeed you have kept yourselves busy as only dwarves can.”
As the meeting broke up, the first of Maran’s tasks was done. Now she had a new task. It was time to speak with Quema.
Maran went to the big kitchen to visit Freifrau Quema. Finding her proved easy, as most of the kitchen staff were in the courtyard with guns pointed at them. The only staff remaining were the various dwarven kitchen meisters and Quema.
Quema stopped chopping pickles and welcomed Maran with a broad smile. “Oh, Maran, I am so glad that you came down. I need all help that I can get. How is life with the new Kurfurstin?”
“Chaotic, ma’am. Does she ever stop drinking?”
“No. She doesn’t. I have talked to her, and we have our differences of opinion. Most everyone thinks I am over-concerned, but I still think that she is an extreme of extremes.”
“I wish that I could do something.”
“You’re her Loam cook. Speak up. Moralize at her. That’s your job. What’s a kitchen without a Loam moralizing at you?”
That made Maran smile.
Quema smiled back. “See, I made you smile. You’ve gotten frownier since I’ve known you. What’s making you sad, beside the obvious?”
“I learned some disturbing things, ma’am. Did the Ironmongers really do such terrible things at Fera Nea?”
Quema paled. She spoke guardedly. “Where does that come from?”
“It’s a good source, ma’am.”
“Let’s pause. Too many ears around here. Back to my sitting room,” said Quema, putting down her knife.
They went back and sat. Quema made no pot of tea this time.
Maran started the questioning. “Ma’am, what is the truth of Fera Nea? What did we do to the people there?”
“I hate this secret,” said Quema, “I hate it. I hate it. I don’t even know where to start.”
“Tell me what you can.”
Quema looked at her hands for a while, then began speaking. “There was an earthquake. The enemy rushed in over the collapsed walls. Svero ordered the sacking of the temples immediately upon seeing the palace collapse. By his logic, our employment was over and they owed us. I was surprised. I was too new. I should have argued with him, but I didn’t. Instead, I stood there taking gold off people as they fled. We were supposed to be guarding that Uma gate. We swore oaths to defend it, but Svero said that the empire was dead, so it didn’t matter. But it did matter. We’re not Oathbreakers. Dead or not dead, our oaths are the same.
Standing Between Earth and Heaven Page 9
