Sword of the Bright Lady (39 page)

Over dinner, ensconced in his chapel and surrounded by his own people, Christopher relayed the story of the day's events solely so that he could end by demanding, “What else does everybody know that nobody's told me yet?”

“Well, we can hardly know that, can we?” Svengusta laughed. “I'd give you the genealogical history of everyone in the village, including horses and pigs, but there isn't enough beer in the world to keep me awake through the telling.”

“Your Church is exacting,” Gregor observed, “for you to not have noticed this yet. She shows the boy no special favor.” Gregor approved of this, it seemed. Well, so did Christopher.

“I need Lalania,” Christopher said. “She'd know what I need to know. Why does she keep running off? Maybe I should chain her down next time I see her.”

“I've tried,” Gregor said with uncharacteristic moroseness, but then he changed the subject. “Pater, might I request your charity?”

“Um, perhaps. What?” Christopher tried to stifle his automatic reflex to spend money.

“Not to detract from my gratitude for your healing, but my armor needs some repair as well.”

“I guess I do employ a smith now, so sure, I can have him look at it when I go into town next.”

Gregor was confused. “Can't you fix it yourself?”

“I'm not a smith.”

“But you are a priest.”

They stared at each other in mutual perplexity.

“Ahem,” Svengusta said, and the table looked to him for rescue. “Perhaps you should consult your books, Brother.”

An intense hour later, Christopher ran his finger over a rent in the blue armor, whispering words in Celestial. The metal flowed like wax, ran together, and smoothed. It wasn't a weld, it was an undoing. The metal was restored perfectly, as if it had never been torn.

“Normally we leave this to the smiths,” Svengusta explained. “Our Church does not compete with them for services, and they kindly agree not to compete with us for ours.”

“The smiths can do this?” Christopher asked, still in awe.

“Of course. What did you think their Novice ranks were for?”

Christopher started grinning uncontrollably, a lopsided smirk that twisted his face into a clown's mask. Making guns was going to be a lot easier than he'd ever dared hope.

“Is he all right?” Gregor asked.

“He does this all the time,” Helga said, embarrassed.

“How often can they do it? Are they limited, like me, to a few times a day?” Christopher fired out questions. “What about the carpenters? Can they do this too?”

“Peace, Brother,” Svengusta demanded. “We're not privy to the secrets of the guilds. But I assure you, they must be limited. And yes, every formal craft has its own powers.”

“There's even one for cooking,” Helga said, surprising everyone. “Well, that's what I heard. But only rich men's wives can ever get that.”

Svengusta frowned. “A frivolous use of tael that would be,” he said, in counterpoint to Helga's obvious envy.

“No,” the miller said, the instant Christopher walked through the door. “Absolutely not.”

“But I haven't asked anything,” Christopher protested.

“I see the way your eyes move. I have the lease in perpetuity. If you've come to grind grain, you are welcome, but otherwise get out.”

“Can I look at your water wheel, at least? If I have to build my own, it would be helpful.”

“You looked at Old Bog once, and now it's yours,” the miller said sourly. But he couldn't resist the chance to show off his machinery to an appreciative audience.

Christopher was duly impressed. It was only wood with iron fittings, but it was sturdy and reliable, twelve feet tall and groaning in an inexorable pirouette. Unfortunately, it was also well situated, on a spur of ground at the narrow point of the river. There was no room for another. What grain the water could not grind was ground by horse-driven stones, a tiresome and expensive affair.

But Christopher needed a source of constant power, and the mill sat idle half the time. The iron fist of efficiency was about to descend on these pastoral, unsuspecting people, and Christopher was its top hatchet man. He tried not to think about that on the way to Dereth's party.

The event was as tedious as a medieval coronation. It seemed half the town had crowded into the church hall to witness boring speeches and meaningless prayers. At the end of it all Dereth ate a small purple ball, everybody cheered, and kegs were knocked open, transforming the event into Oktoberfest in an instant. Christopher hoped the free-flowing booze would earn him a little forgiveness.

As it was, the smiths were less concerned with Christopher than they were with Karl. The contracts were still not issued, and no one knew why. Unable to discuss the matter without lying, Christopher attached himself to Dereth's side, enjoying the smith's family. The smith's daughter was remarkably cheerful, considering her fiancé was lying cold and stiff in the church morgue.

“I have faith, my lord,” Dynae said, when he indelicately broached the topic. “He will have many brushes with death at your side, but you will never lose him.”

Christopher did not feel it was fair to call it a brush with death when somebody actually died, but he chose not to quibble. The girl might explain who she had faith
in
, and Christopher did not want that burden. Let Faren carry it, and the grief, if the boy did not come back.

Escaping the girl and her radiant complacency, he trapped Jhom in a corner alone when the man went to refill his mug for the seventh time.

“What do you think of this?” Christopher asked the young smith, handing him a schematic.

Jhom studied the paper with appreciation. “Drawing this lathe looks like it was almost as much work as building it would have been.”

“Could your father's shop make it?”

“Of course. . . . What's this part?” Jhom pointed to the bearing sleeve.

Christopher handed him another drawing, a schematic blow-up of the part.

“How many more of these are there?” Jhom asked with dawning comprehension.

Christopher grinned. “About two dozen,” he answered. “Still think your shop could make it?”

“Yes,” Jhom said loyally. “But it would take some time.”

“Time is one thing I hear you've got these days.”

“We won't once Goodman Karl finally puts in his order.”

“Then you'd better get started.”

“How is it powered?” Jhom asked, leafing through the drawings. The young man was an engineer at heart. That didn't mean Dereth was wrong, though. Christopher liked to think of himself as a pretty good engineer, but he handled a drill press like a pregnant elephant danced the ballet. Great machinists were born, not made, like artists and musicians.

But power was a topic Christopher didn't want to discuss at the moment, so he changed the subject.

“I hear you trained for the priesthood as a boy.”

“A youthful indiscretion.” The smith's joke could not hide his embarrassment.

“Nothing wrong with being a priest,” Christopher said with a wink, although he knew it wasn't considered a particularly virile profession like soldiering or smithing. “But it's even better to be a smith who can read and write. How are your sums? Do you do the books for your father?”

“Adequately,” Jhom said, close to blushing.

“Do you enjoy it?” But Christopher had gone too far, and Jhom's face turned hard. “Journeyman, I did not come to mock you,” Christopher pleaded. “This is Crazy Pater Christopher here, who never means what everyone else means. I came to hire you. I want you to oversee building this lathe, and then I want you to oversee running it.”

“What has that got to do with sums?” Jhom asked, softening a little. Christopher apparently still had some credit left on that crazy card.

“Because I don't want you to run the lathe, I want you to supervise it. I want you to hire other men to run this lathe and the other tools I'll be making. I want you to take orders, pay salaries, buy raw materials, deliver finished goods, settle disputes, encourage the workers and satisfy the customers. I want you to run a shop. Not be a shop, but run one. One that can work according to drawings.

“Everybody likes you,” Christopher pointed out. “They don't particularly like me. There's a chance for both of us to gain here.”

“How big of a shop?” Jhom asked, reluctantly curious.

This was a delicate moment. “Pretty big. I'm thinking of hiring a few Seniors to work in it.”

Jhom was not unappreciative of Christopher's ambition and grinned wryly. “That would be a shop worth running. And a challenge, too, to keep such noble horses pulling in the same direction.”

“There would be a salary involved. And a share of the profits.” But Christopher wasn't going to offer to promote any more smiths.

Jhom was tempted but not yet ready to hop the fence, so Christopher stalled for time.

“Just think about it, Journeyman. Build this lathe for me and think about it.” He was trying to be subtle and patient, but it wasn't his strong suit.

At the end of it all, when he was tired and ready to go home, he was ambushed. He walked through a door, heading for the stables, and found himself face-to-face with the unsmiling Vicar Rana.

“First smiths, and now millers? Is there no satiation for your greed?”

Small towns and secrets. He should have known.

“I'll pay for it. Name a fair price.” Although, since he would be paying with paper, he wasn't sure any price could be fair.

“No. We need merely wait until you are drafted, and then our lives can resume their normal course.”

Christopher shook his head reflexively. The machine economy he built to make weapons would, inevitably, revolutionize the making of other things. Nothing would be the same in his wake.

“The wagon of the world has changed direction, Sister,” he said in as neutral a tone as he could manage, “and now it is I who seek to keep your head from falling under the wheel.”