Jack Whyte - The Skystone

She chose to believe me. "Good, " she said, approvingly. "I had an aunt, Aunt Liga. A remarkable woman. She was firmly convinced that men rule in this world simply by default, because women are content not to challenge their supremacy. She went into commerce. She bought real estate and amassed a fortune. She was quite scandalous in her youth, even in Rome, which was a scandal in itself, but by the time she died she had achieved a kind of respectability through sheer notoriety and ridiculous wealth. She left all of it, her money and her lands and buildings, to me. " She stopped, looking me straight in the eye again over the two feet or so that separated us.

"I am a very wealthy woman, Publius. I own a very large amount of the city of Rome itself, and a fair-sized portion of Constantinople, in the form of land and buildings. " She paused again and looked at me seriously before going on. "I love my brother dearly, but now that I have my own wealth, I find I also have the courage to indulge myself in my own ideas. I suppose what I really mean is I have come to agree with my Aunt Liga's ideas about life and the way one lives it. When I marry again, I shall choose my husband, much as it may distress Caius. I will not be treated like disposable property simply because I happen to have been born in a female body. I have a good mind. I read, I write, I think, and I conduct my own enterprises through my own lawyers. "

By this time I was truly confused about her motives in telling me all of this. "Have you said any of this to Caius?" In her company, strangely enough, I could no longer think of him as "the General. "

"No. I haven't had the opportunity. " She laughed. "I'm practising on you. Caius can be formidable when his sensibilities are outraged. He's so traditional. I know he disapproved of Aunt Liga very strongly. He will have an apoplectic fit when he finds out she has left all of her ill-acquired fortune to me. She died just a year after he left for Africa, and it was about a year after that I found out she had named me as her heir. Since then, I have been learning to run my affairs with the help of my lawyers — two here and five in Rome. I have been to Rome and met all of them, and I have spent much time since then studying my circumstances. I know they are all robbing me outrageously, but one of these fine days I shall deal with that. They're all going to get a nasty surprise. In the meantime, I have not had a chance to tell Caius anything about it. "

She looked away again, back into the heart of the fire, and again a silence fell. This time, however, there was no discomfort, for we were both thinking about what she had told me. A pocket of resin in one of the logs snapped loudly and the entire body of the fire settled inward; a million fireflies seemed to swarm on the burning logs signalling that they were starting to change from fuel to embers. I was wondering idly whether to add some more fuel when she decided for me.

"Put some more wood on and tell me about your skystone. " This time it was easy to smile at her. "What would you like to know about it?"

"Everything. It fascinates me. Before he left for Africa, Caius told me about the sword of Theodosius, about how it was made originally by your grandfather for your father from the metal of a stone he believed to have fallen from the heavens. Now I would like to hear the story from you. You believe the stone did fall from the sky, do you not?" I stood upright. "Yes, I do, " I said, "but the sword of Theodosius is nothing. Look at this. " I reached behind my back and unsheathed the dagger from where it nestled in its familiar place at the base of my spine.

"Be careful, " I said as I handed it to her. "It is far sharper than any other blade you have ever known. "

When I had finished adding more logs to the fire, I turned back to find her engrossed in looking at the blade.

"What makes the blade so silvery?" She held up the knife so that its blade reflected the flames of the fire.

I sat beside her and held out my hand and she reversed the dagger, slapping its heavy hilt into my open palm. Extending my arm towards the fire, I could plainly see the tiny print of her thumb on the shining blade. I moved the point from side to side, watching the reflection of the light as it ran up and down the blade.

"I don't know, Luceiia, but I think there's another metal in there besides iron. "

"Mmm, Caius told me. But tell me about iron. He also told me you said it was a new study."

"That's correct, " I said, my surprise showing in my voice. "But I said it is comparatively new. Why would you want to know about iron?"

"I told you, I have a mind. I want to know all I can about everything that interests me, and I know nothing about iron. Not a thing. "

"Very well, " I said, "I accept that. Where would you like me to begin?"

"At the beginning. But please talk to me as you would to Caius. Try not to think of me as a woman. "

I resisted the temptation to look at her breasts or at the way the material of her gown clung to the sweep of her thigh. I tried desperately not to see her hair or the arc of her cheekbone. I fought to ignore the fullness of her lips. I attempted, deliberately and positively, to ignore everything about her that was unignorable and to consider what I would have said to a man in response to the same request.

"Well, " I mumbled, "let me think about it for a minute. I've tried to explain this before — to Caius — and it isn't easy. I don't want to confuse you, and I don't want to bore you. " I collected my thoughts into an approximation of logical sequence. "For a start, I don't know much more than you do about the subject... nobody does. You know the story of the skystone, but do you know that my grandfather almost gave up on trying to melt it down?"

She nodded. "I do. It seemed strange to me at the time that anyone should try to melt a stone, but I didn't want to parade my total ignorance to Caius, so I let it pass. What about it?"

"Well, " I went on, "almost all metal comes originally from stone, but not all stone contains metal. The stones that do contain it are called ore-bearing stones, the ore being, if you like, the raw metal. "

"You mean raw, as in uncooked?"

I nodded. "Exactly. Iron ore is red. Have you ever seen hillsides in your travels that looked as though they were rust-stained?" She dipped her head in acknowledgement.

"Well, that's exactly what they were. The rock that produces that red-stained effect is iron ore. We take that stone and we crush it and wash it thoroughly, and then we dry it over heat. The washing gets rid of the ordinary soil and other soluble material. What's left we burn at great heat in a tall kiln, or oven furnace, for a long time. In the course of the burning, or smelting as we call it, the metal melts from the ore and drips down into a crucible in the bottom of the kiln. We finish up, when the kiln has cooled, with what is essentially a lump of pure iron mixed with slag, the residue from the furnace. Then we go to work with our hammers, and by simply beating this mass— which is like a big, dirty sponge — we hammer out as much of the slag as we possibly can. It just falls out. and we are left at the end of the process with a lump of iron. We call it wrought iron, because it has literally been wrought out of stone by the sweat of our bodies and the pounding of our hammers. You follow me so far?" She nodded again, wide-eyed and obviously interested.

"Good. Now, here's where it gets complicated. This wrought iron is solid iron, and good for all kinds of purposes. It's easy to shape and it's easy to work with. But it's too soft to hold an edge. A mediocre hammered bronze edge is much keener and longer lasting than a wrought-iron edge. Of course, iron is almost impossible to work with when it is cold. You have to heat it to a red-hot state to be able to shape it. " She nodded, acknowledging this well-known fact.