L. Modesitt - Natural Ordermage

“Would you mind company?”

“Oh…no. Please…” She gestured vaguely across the table.

“Do you know when you’ll be leaving or what ship you’ll be on?” asked Rahl, after seating himself and taking a small swallow of the ale in his mug.

“They say I’ll be on the Legacy of Westwind. It’s an older steamer that runs between Nylan and different ports in Candar, and once in a while to Hamor.”

“What does a purser do?”

“I’m going to be the assistant purser. Pursers take care of obtaining supplies and provisions, for obtaining passage fees from passengers and ensuring their billeting, and for overseeing the mess, and for maintaining all the accounts for those. On some ships, the chief purser handles all the ship’s accounts. There are other duties as well.” Meryssa offered a faint smile.

“But…why…” Rahl shook his head.

“Why being a purser instead of an exile? According to Magistra Leyla, that’s because I’m not really angry or chaos-driven, but somehow dissatisfied, and I’ll always be dissatisfied until I see how people live elsewhere, but seeing it should be enough, instead of having to live there.”

Was her underlying sadness because of that dissatisfaction? Rahl wondered. He took a bite of the fish fried in egg batter. He didn’t recognize what he was eating, but it was mild and warm and filling.

“How are you finding Nylan?” asked Meryssa.

“I can’t say I’ve seen much of anything except around here. I’ve been so busy.”

“It’s that way for everyone for the first few days. You’ll have sevenday afternoon and eightday off. Then you can walk around and see more.”

“What should I see?”

“Oh…you should go down to the harbor and the market squares there. It doesn’t matter what day it is, there’s always someone selling something. I like taking the west walk, along the cliffs to the west. You can look down at the beaches below and out at the Gulf, and it’s beautiful, especially near sunset. There aren’t many people there, either.”

“Hello there, you two!” Khalyt’s voice jolted Rahl, pleasant as the greeting was.

“Khalyt…I’d thought you’d be here earlier,” said Meryssa.

“I was working late with Kyltyn. I’ve got an idea, and I think it will really work,” Khalyt announced as he slid into the place at the table beside Meryssa.

“What sort of idea?” asked Rahl.

“Steam engines are reciprocating…”

Rahl had no idea what Khalyt meant. Once more, he had understood every single word the young engineer used-and what he said made no sense.

“The way they work, the steam from the boiler forces a piston back and forth and you have to use a crank or a drive wheel to turn that into a circular motion to drive the screw shaft…”

Abruptly, Khalyt stopped and took out several sheets of paper and a grease marker and began to sketch. When he had finished, he had a crude diagram.

This time Rahl understood, at least in general terms.

“Pushing those heavy shafts back and forth takes a great amount of chaos-energy. To contain that requires masses of black iron. That’s heavy. So the more powerful the steam engine, the more weight the ship has to carry, and the more chaos-energy it takes to move it. I’ve been thinking about how we could use the steam from the boilers directly….”

Once more Khalyt began to sketch, but the diagram looked more like a pole with vanes extending from it. “Now this would fit inside a housing, and if we get the stream pressure high enough and run it through the vanes here, they’ll turn the shaft directly, and we won’t lose as much power with all the conversion machinery. This turbine, even all made out of black iron, weighs much less…”

Rahl frowned.

Khalyt stopped. “You look doubtful.”

“Ah…no. Not…well, I don’t know anything about engines, and I don’t know much about machines, except what Magister Sebenet has taught me about the printing press. Yesterday, I made a mistake. It was a little mistake. One of the fasteners that holds the pasteboard page-set on the press wasn’t set just quite right, and the press only turned a few times before everything ripped apart.” Rahl laughed ruefully. “I was cleaning up the mess until close to lamps-out. Now, if I understand what you’re saying”-he pointed to the sketch of what Khalyt had called a turbine-“this is going to be turning very fast, far faster than the press. How are you going to make sure everything stays tight and in place and balanced?”

Khalyt looked at Rahl, then laughed. “My friend, you should be an engineer! That is the biggest problem. Every one of the turbine vanes will have to be precisely the same as every other one, but I have calculated a way to do that, using order-forging and black iron. Anything that must be strong and thin and deals with great forces must be made out of black iron. Regular iron or steel will break. That is why the inside of the turbine will be made of black iron.”

“Will this make the black ships faster?” asked Meryssa.

“So much faster…you cannot imagine how much faster. That is necessary because the Hamorian warships are getting to be almost as fast as the black ships.”

“Where are the black ships?” Rahl had heard of them all his life, but he’d never seen one. They didn’t port in Land’s End. That he knew.

“In the harbor. When they are in port, they are moored at the western pier. You can’t get on the pier unless you’re crew or an engineer. The main engineering hall is just above there. You can see it from just below the bell tower.”

“And this idea will work?” asked Meryssa.

Khalyt shrugged. “The idea is the simple part.” He turned to Rahl. “Making all the parts so that they fit together is what is hardest.”

Meryssa laughed, and the laugh held sadness as well. “Making anything work is the hardest part. It is so easy to talk and think.”

Rahl held his frown within himself. He’d always found doing things easier than thinking or learning. Copying was far easier than thinking about what he had just copied. Sometimes, like when he’d had to learn truncheon handling, discovering how to use what he’d learned was hard for a while, but just doing things was simply physical work.

“You have a funny look on your face, Rahl,” Meryssa said.

“I was just thinking about what you said.”

Meryssa turned, half rose from the table, and gestured. “Aleasya!”

The woman who turned and moved toward Meryssa was broad-shouldered and muscular, possibly a few years older than Rahl, with a squarish chin, green eyes, and neck-length brown hair. Her summer tunic and trousers were a darker gray. “Meryssa.”

“If you wouldn’t mind joining us?” Meryssa inclined her head. “Have you met Rahl?”

“I have not.” Aleasya set her platter and mug on the table next to Rahl, then slipped gracefully onto the bench.

“Aleasya’s an arms instructor, but she’s best with blades,” Meryssa said.

“I’m not nearly so good as Zastryl or Fhiera. They’re true armsmasters.”

“You’re good enough to have done a tour as a ship’s champion.”

“Anyone who’s trained here and made arms level can do that,” demurred Aleasya. “They don’t really take arms that seriously in any of the port cities, especially in Candar or Austra. In Hamor, if there’s real trouble, they bring in mages. We’re the only sea traders who need armsmen on every vessel.”

Rahl just listened.

“She started as a trading marine,” explained Meryssa.

“It’s better to be a staff arms trainer here. Easier to keep in shape and condition, too.”

Abruptly, Khalyt and Meryssa stood.

“We need to go,” explained Meryssa.