David Weber - How firm a foundation

“Come on. The simplest way to see whether it’s there or not is to go take a look. Care for a walk?”

“Stop,” Captain Sahlavahn said as he and Mahndrayn reached a heavily timbered, locked door set into a grassy hillside.

A small, green-painted storage shed stood beside the door, and the captain opened its door.

“Here.” He took a pair of felt slippers from a pigeonholed shelf with two dozen compartments and handed them across. “These should fit, if I remember your boot size. Speaking of which-boots, I mean-they get left here.”

He pointed into the shed, and Mahndrayn nodded. Both of them removed their Navy boots, setting them under the shelving, then pulled on the slippers. Despite every precaution, the possibility of loose grains of powder on the magazine floor was very real, and a spark from an iron shoe nail or even the friction between a leather sole and the floor could have unpleasant consequences.

Sahlavahn waited until Mahndrayn had his slippers on, then unlocked the magazine door.

“Follow me,” he said, and led the way into a brick-walled passageway.

There was another heavy, locked door at its end, and a lighter door set into the passageway’s side. Sahlavahn opened the unlocked door into a long, narrow room. Its right wall, the one paralleling the surface of the hillside into which the magazine had been built, was solid brick, but its left wall was a series of barred glass windows, and a half-dozen large lanterns hung from hooks in its ceiling. Sahlavahn drew one of the new Shan-wei’s candles from his pocket, struck it on the brick wall, and lit two of the lanterns from its sputtering, hissing flame.

“That should be enough for now,” he said. He waved out the Shan-wei’s candle, moistened his fingertips and pinched them together on the spent stem to be sure it was fully extinguished, then stepped back out into the passageway and closed the side door behind him.

He made sure it was securely shut before he unlocked the inner door, and Mahndrayn heartily approved of his caution. The last thing anyone wanted inside a powder magazine was a live flame, which was the reason for the lantern room; the light spilling through its carefully sealed windows would provide them with illumination without actually carrying a lamp into the magazine itself. At the same time, the possibility of powder dust drifting out of the opened magazine and into the lantern room was something to be avoided. It was far less likely to happen now than it would have been just three or four years ago, of course. The new grained powder didn’t separate into its constituent ingredients the way the old-fashioned meal powder had, which meant it didn’t produce the explosive fog powder shipments had all too often trailed behind them. But as someone who worked regularly with explosives, Mahndrayn was in favor of taking every possible precaution where this much gunpowder was concerned.

Sahlavahn opened the inner door-this one fitted with felted gaskets-and the two of them entered the magazine proper. Barrels of powder were stacked neatly, separated by convenient avenues to facilitate handling them with all the caution they deserved. It was cool and dry, just the way it was supposed to be, and Mahndrayn stood for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust fully to the relatively dim illumination coming from the lantern room.

“It looks pretty nearly full,” he said. “How are we going to tell if-?”

His voice cut off abruptly as the point of his cousin’s sword drove into the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord and killing him almost instantly.

“Captain Sahlavahn!” the shift supervisor said in surprise. “I didn’t expect you this afternoon, Sir!”

“I know.” The captain looked a little distracted-possibly even a little pale-the supervisor thought, but he spoke with his usual courtesy. “I just thought I’d drop by.” The supervisor’s expression must have given him away, because Sahlavahn shook his head with a chuckle which might have sounded just a bit forced if someone had been listening for it. “Not because I think anything’s wrong! I just like to look things over once in a while.”

“Of course, Sir. Let me-oh, I see you already have slippers.”

“Yes.” Sahlavahn looked down at the felt slippers on his feet. They were a little dirty and tattered-looking, the supervisor thought. “I thought it would be simpler to leave my boots in my office, since I had these lying around in one of my desk drawers,” the captain explained, and the supervisor nodded.

“Of course, Sir. Do you want an escort?”

“I believe I’m adequately familiar with the facility,” Sahlavahn said dryly.

“Of course! I didn’t mean-”

“Don’t worry about it, Lieutenant.” Sahlavahn patted him lightly on the arm. “I didn’t think you did.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The supervisor stood respectfully to escort Sahlavahn out of his office. He accompanied the captain into the anteroom and waited until Sahlavahn had left, then turned to one of his clerks. Like everyone who worked in the powder mill proper, the clerk was already in slippers, and the supervisor twitched his head after the vanished captain.

“Quick, Pahrkyr! Nip around the side and warn Lieutenant Mahrstahn Captain Sahlavahn’s on his way!”

“Yes, Sir!”

The clerk dashed out of the anteroom, and the supervisor returned to his own office wondering what bee had gotten into the Old Man’s bonnet. It wasn’t like the perpetually efficient, always well-organized Captain Sahlavahn to just drop by this way.

The supervisor was just settling into his chair once again when he, his clerks, Captain Sahlavahn, and the one hundred and three other men currently working in Powder Mill #3 all died in a monstrous blast of fire and fury. A chain of explosions rolled through the powder mill like Langhorne’s own Rakurai, rattling every window in Hairatha. Debris vomited into the sky, much of it on fire, trailing smoke in obscenely graceful arcs as it soared outward, then came crashing down in fresh fire and ruin. It shattered barracks and administrative buildings like an artillery bombardment, setting more fires, maiming and killing. Voices screamed and stunned men wheeled towards the disaster in disbelief. Then alarm bells began a frenzied clangor and the men who’d frozen in shock ran frantically into the fire and chaos and the devastation looking for lives to save.

Eleven minutes later magazines Six, Seven, and Eight exploded, as well.

“It’s not looking any better, is it?” Cayleb Ahrmahk’s voice was flat and hard, and Prince Nahrmahn shook his head.

The two of them sat in a private sitting room located off the room which had been Cayleb’s grandfather’s library. That library-added to generously by King Haarahld-had long since outgrown the chamber and been moved to larger quarters, and Cayleb had had the old library converted into a working office near the imperial suite. Now he and Nahrmahn sat looking out the windows which faced north, out across the waterfront and the blue expanse of Howell Bay in the general direction of Big Tirian Island. They didn’t actually see the bay, however. Big Tirian was almost six hundred miles from where they sat, but both of them were gazing at the imagery relayed from Owl’s SNARCs.

“I don’t think it is going to look any better,” Nahrmahn said quietly, looking at the shattered, smoking hole and the demolished buildings around it which had been one of the Empire’s largest and most important powder mills, and shook his head sadly. “I think all we can do is bury the dead and rebuild from scratch.”

“I know.” It was obvious the financial cost of rebuilding was the least of Cayleb’s concerns at this moment. “I just-” He shook his own head, the movement choppier and angrier than Nahrmahn’s headshake had been. “We’ve been so lucky about avoiding this kind of accident. I just can’t believe we’ve let something like this happen.”