Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 48

It was late in the muggy afternoon by the time they made it to the site of the Retreat. Sitting in the wagon beside Jori as they cleared the top of the final hill, Richard was awestruck by the sight. It was beyond huge. He couldn’t imagine how many square miles had been cleared. Gangs of thousands of men, looking like ants spread out below, worked in lines with shovels and baskets reshaping the contour of the land.

Jori was disinterested in the construction, and only spat over the side, offering the occasional “I suppose” to some of Richard’s questions.

The foundation was still being laid in deep trenches, enabling Richard, looking down from the road, to see on the ground the outline of the future structure. It was hard to fathom how enormous the building was going to be.

Seeing the specks moving slowly beside it, it was hard to keep in mind that they were men.

For sheer size, the structure would rival anything Richard had ever seen. There were miles of grounds and gardens going in. Fountains and other towering structures along entrance roads were beginning to be erected.

Sweeping stretches of mazes were being constructed with hedges. Hillsides were dotted with trees that had been planted according to a grand plan.

The Retreat faced a lake in what was to be that majestic park. The short side of the main building was to run a quarter mile along the river.

Stone pilings marched partway out into the river, with a series of connecting arches just starting to be constructed. Apparently, part of the palace was to extend out over the water, with docks for the emperor’s pleasure craft.

Across the river lay more of the city. On the palace side of the river, too, the city spread all around, though at a great distance from the Retreat. Richard couldn’t imagine how many buildings and people had been displaced for the construction. This was to be no distant and remote emperor’s palace, but rather it was set right in the center of Altur’Rang.

Roads were being paved with millions of cobbles, giving the multitudes of citizens of the Order access to come and see the wand structure. There were already crowds of people standing behind rope barricades, watching the construction.

Despite the poverty of the Old World, it would appear that this grand palace was to be a crown jewel of unsurpassed splendor.

Stone of various kinds lay in great piles. In the distance, Richard could see men working at cutting it into the required shapes. The heavy afternoon air rang with the faraway knells of hundreds of hammers and chisels. There were stockpiles of granite and marble in a variety of colors, and massive quantities of limestone blocks. Special quarry wagons waited in serpentine columns to deliver yet more. The long blocks of stone, called lifts, were slung under heavy beams that bridged the front and rear axles. Huts and great open shelters had been built for the stone workers so they could work no matter the weather. Timber was stickered in row upon row of huge stacks covered with purpose-built roofs. The overflow was covered in canvas. Small mountains of materials for mortar were scattered around the foundation, looking like anthills, the illusion aided by all the dark specks of men moving about.

Away from the site itself, on a road that snaked its way along the side of a hill, among a small city of new work buildings overlooking the site, lay the blacksmith’s shop. It was quite large, compared with such places Richard had seen before. Of course, Richard had never seen anything on this scale being built. He had seen grand places that already existed. To see one just beginning was a revelation. The sheer scale of everything was disorienting.

Jori expertly backed his team, putting the rear of the wagon right at double doors standing open into blackness.

“There you be,” Jori said. It was a long speech for the lanky driver.

He pulled out a loaf of bread and a waterskin filled with ale and climbed down from the wagon to find a place farther down the hill, where he could sit and watch the building while Richard worked at unloading the iron.

The blacksmith’s shop was dark and stifling hot, even in the outer, cluttered, stockroom. Like all blacksmith’s shops, the walls in the workroom were covered in soot. Windows were kept to a minimum, mostly located overhead and covered with shutters, so as to keep it dark in order to more easily judge the nature of the glowing metal.

Despite being recently built for the work at the palace, the blacksmith’s shop already looked a hundred years old. Nearly every spot held some tool or other in a dizzying array and variety. There were rows of tools, piles of them. The rafters were hung with tongs and fire pots and crucibles and squares and dividers and contraptions like huge insects which looked to be used for clamping pieces together. Low benches seemingly cobbled together in haste were hung all round with long-handled dies of every sort. Some benches held smaller grindstones. Slots around some tables held hundreds of files and rasps. Some of the low tables were covered in a jumble of hammers in such variety as Richard had never imagined, their handles all sticking out, making the tabletops look like huge pincushions.

The floor was choked with clutter: boxes overflowing with parts, bars, rivets; wedges; lengths of iron stock; clippings; pry bars; pole hooks; dented pots; wooden jigs; tin snips; lengths of chain; pulleys; and a variety of special anvil attachments. Everything was covered with soot or dust or metal filings.

Broad short barrels full of liquids sat around the anvils where men hammered on glowing iron held in tongs, flattening, stretching, cutting, squaring, clipping. Glowing metal hissed and smoked in protest as it was quenched in the liquid. Other men used the horns of their anvils to bend metal that looked like bits of sunset held captive in tongs. They held up those fascinating bits and matched them to patterns, hammered on the metal some more, and checked it again.

Richard could hardly think in all the noise.

In the darkness, a man worked a big bellows, putting all his weight on the downstroke. The blast of air made the fire roar. Charcoal overflowed from baskets sitting wherever there had been room to put them. Cubbyholes held pipe and odd scraps of metal. Metal hoops leaned against benches and planks. Some of the hoops were for barrels, bigger ones were for wagon wheels. Tongs and hammers lay here and there on the floor where men had dropped them in the haste of battle with the hot iron.

The whole place was as agreeable a clutter as he had ever seen.

A man in a leather apron stood not far away at a door to another workroom. He held out a chalkboard covered with a maze of lines as he studied a large contraption of metal bars on the floor in the room beyond.

Richard waited, not wanting to interrupt the man’s concentration. The sharply defined muscles of his sooty arms glistened with sweat. The man tapped the chalk against his lip as he puzzled, then swiped a line clean on the board and drew it again, moving its connecting points.

Richard frowned at the drawing. It looked familiar, somehow, even though it was no recognizable object.

“Would you be the master blacksmith?” Richard asked when the man paused and looked over his shoulder.

The man’s brow seemed enduringly fixed in an intimidating scowl. His hair was cropped close to his skull—a good practice around so much fire and white-hot metal—adding to his menacing demeanor. He was of average height and sinewy, but it was his countenance that made him look big enough for any trouble that might come along. By the way the other men moved, and glanced at this man, they feared him.

Taken by inexplicable compulsion, Richard pointed at the line the man had just drawn. “That’s wrong. What you just did is wrong. You have the top end right, but the bottom should go here, not where you put it.”

He didn’t so much as blink. “Do you even know what this is?”

“Well, not exactly, but I—”

“Then how can you presume to tell me where to put this support?”

The man looked like he wanted to stuff Richard in the forge and melt him down.

“Offhand, I don’t know, exactly. Something just tells me that—”

“You had better be the man with the iron.”

“I am,” Richard said, glad to change the subject and wishing he had kept his mouth shut in the first place. He had only been trying to help.

“Where would—”

“Where have you been all day? I was told it would be here first thing this morning. What did you do? Sleep till noon?”

“Ah, no, sir. We went right to the foundry first thing. Ishaq sent me right there at dawn. But the man at the foundry was having problems because—”

“I’m not interested. You said you had the iron. It’s already late enough. Get it unloaded.”

Richard looked around. Every spot seemed occupied.

“Where would you like it?”

The master blacksmith glared around at the crammed room as if he expected some of the piles to get up and move for him. They didn’t.

“If you’d have been here when you were supposed to be here, you could have put it out there, just inside the door in the outer supply room. Now they brought that big rock sled that needs welding, so you will have to put the iron in the back. Next time, get out of bed earlier.”

Richard was trying to be polite, but he was losing his patience with being castigated because the blacksmith was having a troubled day.

“Ishaq made it quite clear that you were to get iron today, and he sent me to see to it. I have your iron. I don’t see anyone else able to deliver on such short notice.”

The hand with the chalkboard lowered. The full attention of the man’s glower focused on Richard for the first time. Men who had heard Richard’s words scurried off to attend to important work farther away.

“How much iron did you bring?”

“Fifty bars, eight feet.”

The man let out an angry breath. “I ordered a hundred. I don’t know why they sent an idiot with a wagon when—”

“Do you want to hear the way it is, or do you want to yell at someone? If you just want to spout off to no point and no useful end, then go right ahead as I’m not much injured by ranting, but when you finally want to hear the truth of the way things are, just let me know and I’ll give it.”

The blacksmith peered silently for a moment, a bull bewildered by a bumblebee. “What’s your name?”

“Richard Cypher.”

“So, what’s the truth of the way things are, Richard Cypher?”

“The foundry wanted to fill the order. They have bar stock stacked to the rafters. They can’t get it delivered. They wanted to let me have the whole order, but a transport inspector stationed there wouldn’t let us have the whole hundred bars because the other transport companies are supposed to get their equal loads, but their wagons are broken down.”

“So Ishaq’s wagons aren’t allowed to take more than their fair share, and fifty was their allotment.”

“That’s right,” Richard said. “At least until the other companies can move some more goods.”

The blacksmith nodded. “The foundry is dying to sell me all the iron I can use, but I can’t get it here. I’m not allowed to transport it—to put transport workers, like you, out of work.”

“Were it up to me,” Richard said. “I’d go back for another load today, but they told me they couldn’t give me any more until next week at the earliest. I’d suggest you get every transport company you can find to deliver you a wagonload. That way, you’ll have a better chance to get what you need.”

The blacksmith smiled for the first time. It was amusement at the foolishness of Richard’s idea. “Don’t you suppose I already thought of that? I’ve got orders in with them all. Ishaq is the only one with equipment at the moment. The rest are all having wagon problems, horse problems, or worker problems.”

“At least I have fifty bars for you.”

“That will only keep me going the rest of the day and for the morning.”

The blacksmith turned. “This way. I’ll show you where you can stack it.”

He led Richard through the congested workshop, among the confusion of work and material. They went through a door and down a short connecting hall. The noise fell away behind. They entered a quiet building in back, attached, but set off on its own. The blacksmith unhooked a line attached at a cleat and let down a trapdoor covering a window in the roof.

Light cascaded down into the center of the large room, where stood a huge block of marble. Richard stood staring at the stunning stone heart of a mountain.

It seemed completely out of place in a blacksmith’s workshop. There were tall doors at the far end, where the monolith had been brought in on skids. The rest of the room had space left open all around the towering stone. Chisels of every sort and various-size mallets stuck up from slots along the pitch black walls.

“You can put the bars here, on the side. Be careful when you bring them in.”

Richard blinked. He had almost forgotten the man was there with him.

Still he stared at the lustrous quality of the stone before him. “I’ll be careful,” he said without looking at the blacksmith. “I won’t bang it into the stone.”

As the man started to leave, Richard asked, “I told you my name. What’s yours?”

“Cascella.”

“Is there more to it?”

“Yes. Mister. See that you use it all.”

Richard smiled as he followed the man out. “Yes, sir, Mr. Cascella. Ah, mind if I ask what this is?”

The blacksmith slowed to a stop and turned back. He gazed at the marble standing in the light as if it were a woman he loved.

“This is none of your business, that’s what it is.”

Richard nodded. “I only asked because it’s a beautiful piece of stone. I’ve never seen marble before it was a statue or made into something.”

Mr. Cascella watched Richard watching the stone. “There’s marble all over this site. Thousands of tons of it. This is just one small piece. Now, get my shorted order of iron unloaded.”

By the time Richard was done, he was soaked in sweat, and filthy, not only from the iron bars, but from the soot of the blacksmith’s shop. He asked if he could use some of the water in a rain barrel that the men were using to wash in as they were getting ready to leave for the day. They told him to go ahead.

When he finished, Richard found Mr. Cascella back at the chalkboard, alone in the suddenly silent shop, making corrections to the drawing and writing numbers down the side.

“Mr. Cascella, I’m finished. I kept the bars well off to the side, away from the marble.”

“Thank you,” he mumbled.

“Mind if I ask what you will have to pay for that fifty bars of iron?”

The glare was back. “What’s it to you?”

“From what I heard at the foundry, the man there had been hoping to fill the whole order so he could get three point five gold marks, so, since you got half your order, I believe you will be paying one point seven five gold marks for the fifty bars of iron. Am I correct?”

The glare darkened. “Like I said, what’s it to you?”

Richard put his hands in his back pockets. “Well, I was wondering if you would be willing to buy another fifty bars for one point five gold marks.”

“So, you’re a thief, too.”

“No, Mr. Cascella, I’m not a thief.”

“Then how are you going to sell me iron for a quarter mark less than the foundry is selling it for? You smelting a little iron ore in your room at night, Mr. Richard Cypher?”

“Do you want to hear what I have to say, or not?”

His mouth twisted in annoyance. “Talk.”

“The foundry man was furious because he wasn’t allowed to transport your whole order. He has more iron than he can sell because he isn’t allowed to transport it, and the transport companies are all jammed up so they aren’t showing up. He said he would be willing to sell it to me for less.”

“Why?”

“He needs the money. He showed me his cold blast furnaces. He owes wages and needs charcoal and ore and quicksilver, among other things, but hasn’t enough money to buy it all. The only thing he has plenty of is smelted metal. His business is strangling because he can’t move his product. I asked what price he would be willing to sell me iron for, if he didn’t have to transport it—if I picked it up myself. He told me that if I came after dark, he would sell me fifty bars for one point two five gold marks. If you’re willing to buy it from me for one point five, I’ll have you another fifty bars by morning, when you said you need it.”

The man gaped as if Richard was a bar of iron that had just come to life before his eyes and started talking.

“You know I’m willing to pay one and three-quarters, why would you offer to sell it to me for one and a half?”

“Because,” Richard explained, “I want to sell it for less than you’d have to pay through a transport company so that you’ll buy it from me, instead, and, because I need you to loan me the one and a quarter gold marks, first, so I can buy the bars in the first place and bring them to you. The foundry will only sell them to me if I pay when I come to take them.”

“What’s to keep you from disappearing with my one and a quarter gold marks?”

“My word.”

The man barked a laugh. “Your word? I don’t know you.”

“I told you, my name is Richard Cypher. Ishaq is scared to death of you, and he trusted me to get you the iron so you won’t come wring his neck.”

Mr. Cascella smiled again. “I’d not wring Ishaq’s neck. I like the fellow. He’s stuck in a tight spot.—But don’t you tell him I said that. I’d like to keep him on his toes.”

Richard shrugged. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t tell him you know how to smile. I know, though, that you’re in a tighter spot than Ishaq. You have to deliver goods for the Order, but you’re at the mercy of their methods.”

He smiled again. “So, Richard Cypher, what time will you be here with your wagon?”

“I don’t have a wagon. But, if you agree, I’ll have your fifty iron bars right there”—Richard pointed at a spot out the double doors beside where Jori had parked the wagon—“in a pile, by dawn.”

Mr. Cascella frowned. “If you don’t have a wagon, how you going to get the bars here? Walk?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“I don’t have a wagon, and I want to earn the money. It’s not all that far. I figure I can carry five at a time. That only makes ten trips. I can do that by dawn. I’m used to walking.”

“Tell me the rest of it—why you want to do this. The truth, now.”

“My wife isn’t getting enough to eat. The workers’ group assesses most of my wages, since I’m able to produce, and gives it to those who don’t work. Because I can work, I’ve become a slave to those who can’t, or who don’t wish to. Their methods encourage people to find an excuse to let others take care of them. I intensely dislike being a slave. I figure I can entice you to go along with the deal by offering you a better price. We each gain a benefit. Value for value.”

“If I were to go along, what do you plan to do with all that money—go live off it for a while? Drink it away?”

“I need the money to buy a wagon and a team of horses.”

The frown knotted tighter. “What do you need with a wagon?”

“I need the wagon to deliver you all the iron you’re going to buy from me because I can get it for you cheaper, and because I can deliver it when you need it.”

“You looking to get buried in the sky?”

Richard smiled. “No. I just happen to think that the emperor wants his palace built. From what I’ve heard, they have a lot of slave labor down there—people they’ve captured. But they don’t have enough slave labor to do it all for them. They need people like you, and the foundries.

“If the officials of the Order want to have the work progress—and not have to explain to Emperor Jagang why it isn’t they will be inclined to look the other way. In that narrow crack of need, there is opportunity. I expect I’ll have to bribe a few officials to get them to be busy elsewhere when I come to pick up loads, but I’ve already figured that cost into it. I’ll be acting on behalf of myself, not an established transport company, so they will be more inclined to see this as a way of accomplishing what they need without suspending their morass of restrictions.

“You will be getting iron for less than you pay now, and I can deliver. You can’t even get what you need at the higher price. You will make more, too. We both benefit.”

The blacksmith stared for a moment as he tried to find a flaw in Richard’s plan.

“You’re either the stupidest crook I ever saw, or the . . . I don’t even know what. But I have Brother Narev breathing down my neck, and that isn’t pleasant. Not pleasant at all. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you know how Ishaq sweats over me? I sweat ten times that much when Brother Narev comes to ask why the tools aren’t ready. The brothers don’t want to hear my troubles, they just want what they want.”

“I understand, Mr. Cascella.”

He let out a sigh. “All right, Richard Cypher, one and a half gold marks for fifty bars delivered by dawn tomorrow—but I’ll only give you the one and a quarter now. You get the other quarter mark in the morning, when my iron is here.”

“Agreed. Who is this Brother Narev, anyway?”

“Brother Narev? He’s the high priest—”

“Did I hear someone mention my name?” The voice was deep enough to nearly rattle the tools off the walls.

Richard and the blacksmith turned to see a man approaching from around the corner of the shop. Here and there, his heavy robes betrayed his large bony frame. His face seemed to pull the gathering darkness into the deep creases of his face. Dark eyes gleamed out from under a hooded brow overspread with a tangle of graying hairs. Wiry hair above his ears curled up from under the edges of a dark, creased cap. The cap sat halfway down his forehead. He looked like a shadow come to life to stalk the world.

Mr. Cascella bowed. Richard followed his lead.

“We were just discussing the problem of getting enough iron, Brother Narev.”

“Where are all my new chisels, blacksmith?”

“I have yet to—”

“I have stone sitting down there with no chisels to cut it. I have stonecutters who need more tools. You are holding up my palace.”

The blacksmith lifted a hand toward Richard. “This is Richard Cypher, Brother Narev. He was just telling me how he thought he might be able get me the iron I need and—”

The high priest held up his hand for silence.

“You can get the blacksmith what he needs?” Brother Narev snapped at Richard.

“It can be done.”

“Then do it.”

Richard bowed his head. “By your command, Brother Narev.”

The shadowed figure turned to the shop. “Show me, blacksmith.”

The blacksmith seemed to know what the high priest wanted and followed behind him, gesturing for Richard to come along. Richard understood; he couldn’t get the money to buy the iron until the blacksmith first took care of the important man who had just vanished into the shadows of the shop.

When the blacksmith snapped his fingers and pointed at a lamp on his way by, Richard snatched it up. He lit a long splinter in the glowing coals of the forge and then lit the lamp. He held it up behind the two men as they stood just inside the doorway to the room with the complex contraption of metal bars sitting on the floor beyond.

Mr. Cascella held the chalkboard up in the light. Brother Narev looked at the drawing on the chalkboard, then to the maze of iron lines on the floor, comparing them.

Richard felt an icy tingle at the base of his scalp when he suddenly realized what the thing on the floor was.

Brother Narev pointed to the drawing, to the line Richard had said was wrong.

“This line is wrong,” Brother Narev growled.

The blacksmith wagged his finger over the chalk drawing. “But I have to stabilize this mass over here.”

“I told you to add braces, I didn’t invite you to ruin the main scheme. You can leave the top of the support where you have it, but the bottom should be attached . . . here.”

Brother Narev pointed to where Richard had said it should go.

Mr. Cascella scratched his head of short hair as he stole a glance over his shoulder just long enough to scowl at Richard.

“That would work,” the blacksmith conceded. “It won’t be as easy, but it will work.”

“I’m not concerned with how easy it is,” Brother Narev said with menace. “I don’t want anything attached to this area, here.”

“No, sir.”

“It must be seamless, so none of the joining work shows through when it is covered in gold. Get me those tools made, first.”

“Yes, Brother Narev.”

The high priest turned an uncomfortable scrutiny on Richard. “There’s something about you. . . . Do I know you?”

“No, Brother Narev. I’ve never before met you. I would remember. Meeting a great man such as yourself, I mean. I would remember such a thing.”

He glared askance at Richard. “Yes, I suppose you would. You get the blacksmith his iron.”

“I said I would.”

The Brother grunted irritably. “So you did.”

As the tall shadow of a man stared into Richard’s eyes, Richard absently reached to lift his sword a little to make sure it was clear in its scabbard. The sword wasn’t there.

Brother Narev opened his mouth to say something, but his attention was caught by two young men entering the shop. They wore robes like the high priest, but without caps. They had simple hoods pulled up over their heads, instead.

“Brother Narev,” one called.

“What is it, Neal?”

“The book you sent for has arrived. You asked that we come for you at once.”

Brother Narev nodded to the young disciple, then directed a sour look at Mr. Cascella and Richard.

“Get it done,” he said to both.

Both Richard and the blacksmith bowed their heads as the high priest swept out of the shop.

It felt as if a thundercloud had just departed over the horizon.

“Come on,” Mr. Cascella said. “I’ll get you the gold.”

Richard followed him into a little room where the master blacksmith pulled out a strongbox attached with massive chain to a huge pin in the floor under the plank serving as his desk. He unlocked the strongbox and handed Richard a gold mark.

“Victor.”

Richard looked up from the gold mark and frowned. “What?”

“Victor. You asked what more there was to my name.” He set silver to make up the quarter mark on top of the gold mark resting in Richard’s palm. “Victor.”