The roar continued for a moment as the door closed behind them with a thud, and Karal let his ears get used to the noise and his eyes to the light. The Rose was one of the few taverns where the light was as important as the drink, since so many here were working on projects as they ate. In fact, the lighting in the Throne Room at the Palace was dim by comparison. After coming in from the thick darkness outside, the glare of light took some getting used to.
But as they stood there, and Karal tried to see if Natoli and her cronies were at their usual table, the uproar began to subside, as people saw who was standing in the doorway, and turned to poke neighbors who hadn't yet noticed. As Karal shifted his weight uneasily, the roar faded into absolute silence.
No one moved. Then, off to the right, a single person stood up, a person who had been sitting with her back to the door. She turned and peered across the sea of faces to the doorway.
It was Natoli. And for a moment, Karal considered bolting back outside. She's upset with me, and everyone knows it... I've hurt her feelings, and now they all hate me. Oh, glory, what am I going to do?
"Karal?" she said clearly, and her strong, handsome face lit up with a welcoming smile. Natoli was not "pretty"—but her face had such character written in every line that you never noticed. "Havens, they finally let you take a night off! It's about time! Get over here! Look, everybody, it's Karal!"
The place erupted again, this time with cheers of welcome, a few playful catcalls, and offers of beer, food, or both. As Karal and An'desha waded through the crowd on their way to Natoli's table, he was staggered often by the hearty back slaps and playful punches his friends aimed at him. It occurred to him then that sometimes being Natoli's friend could be as hazardous as being her enemy!
He didn't manage to get across the room without being loaded down with food and an overfilled mug that slopped every time someone slapped his back. He kept apologizing, but it didn't seem that anyone noticed. Or perhaps they were just used to stray beer going everywhere.
Natoli's table was crowded, as usual, but also as usual there was always room for one or two more. People edged over and places were made for him and An'desha, one on either side of Natoli. As he sat down, Natoli helped herself to one of the many sausage rolls that had been thrust at him and offered him a plate of cheese in return.
He shared his bounty with anyone who didn't have food in front of him, and in the course of getting everyone settled again, he lost all of the apprehension he'd felt.
"You looked like a Bardic student in front of a hostile audience when you came in," she said, quite matter-of-factly. "Problems?"
"I suppose I was afraid that you would all be upset with me for not coming here before this," he said, a little shyly. "You might think I thought I was too good for you, now that I'm the Ambassador. Or—something."
She raised a hand and mimed a cuff at his ear. "Be sensible. Father's a Herald, remember? Just because I don't stick my nose into Court, that doesn't mean I don't know what's going on. They've had you tied up with more meetings and business than any one person has a right to be burdened with, and we all knew it. I made sure everyone knew that."
He relaxed at that. "I didn't want you to think that I'd forgotten who my friends are."
"Ha." She applied herself to her meal with a grin. "You've been working, and we haven't exactly been idle. Even if everyone else in Valdemar thinks that the crisis was solved, we know we only put it off for a while. We're still trying to work out a solution. Master Levy thinks there won't be a solution; he thinks we're going to have to come up with one make-do after another, because he thinks that the problem is getting too complicated to actually solve in the time we have."
"Do the mages know that?" he asked, feeling a chill. More temporary solutions? Doesn't that leave us open to mistakes and the results of mistakes?
"The mages know," An'desha confirmed. "At the moment they're trying to let their minds lie fallow while they track the current patterns of mage-energy for Master Levy's crew to analyze. I think some of them are hoping that if they don't try to think about a solution, one will spring forth from the back of their heads, fully formed."
Natoli snorted but didn't comment otherwise.
"Well, that's not necessarily bad thinking," one of the others pointed out. "I'm not talking about wishful thinking—it's just that if you try too hard to put all the facts together, sometimes they won't fall into place. Come on, Natoli, you know that even happens to us!"
"I suppose you're right," Natoli admitted grudgingly. "There is Cletius and the bathtub, for instance. It's just that some of these mages are just so certain that they can vibrate their way to answers that it makes me want to drown them all."
"Let's talk about something else," Karal urged. "Something that has nothing to do with mages or mage-storms or the Empire. What's exciting?"
A red head at the end of the table popped up. "Steam!" he exclaimed. "That's what's exciting! There's no end to what we can do with it! Who needs magic? Steam will save the world!"
"Don't go too far overboard," Natoli warned. "There're problems with steam power that we really ought to consider before we have people riding all over in steam-driven carriages. You have to burn things to heat water, and that makes smoke, and what happens when we start putting more smoke in the air? There's already a soot problem in Haven from all the heating and cooking fires."
"But you won't need heating and cooking fires if we heat everyone's house with the hot waste water from the steam driven mills and manufactories," the other argued. "In fact, we should eliminate most of the soot problem that way."
"Not if you replace every one of those cook fires with one heating the boiler in a steam carriage," someone else put in. "Natoli's right about that. We really need to think about what we're doing before we launch into something we can't stop."
"Wait a moment," Karal interrupted. "Steam carriages?"
"One of the Masters came up with a water pump for draining mines that was steam driven, and someone else realized that the same principle could be used as the motive power for a carriage, by basically adding wheels to the whole affair rather than having a stationary boiler," Natoli explained. She snatched a stick of charcoal out of someone else's hand and began to draw on the paper covering the table in front of them. "You see—here's the boiler, in front of the firebox; pressure builds up in here and you vent it into the cylinder—the piston gets driven back—that turns a wheel—"
As she sketched, Karal began to see what she was talking about. "But why steam carriages at all?" he asked. "Aren't horses good enough?"
Natoli's eyes sparkled, and he realized he had uncovered her secret passion. "But these go faster than horses, Karal," she said. "They never get tired, they can pull more than horses can without hurting themselves, and the only time they have to stop is when they run out of fuel or water."
"Huh." He could think of places where that would be useful. In the mountains, where the roads were cruelly hard on cart horses Or any time you needed to send something very quickly somewhere. Supplies, perhaps, or soldiers. Of course these things would be limited to places where the roads were good, which was quite a limitation, when you thought about it. Using them on a regular basis meant that the roads would have to be improved and kept in repair, and that could get rather expensive....