"He was asleep!" she cried, looking blindly to the door. "I did my best, I swear!"
"Go," Adrian said gently in her language, rising from his crouch and letting the dagger fall along one leg. "Go, now. This is not your fault."
She scuttled out, scooping up clothing as she went. Adrian moved over to the bedside. "Esmond," he said sharply. "Esmond, it's me. What's the matter?"
His elder brother shook himself like a dog coming out of a river. "A dream," he muttered softly. "It must have been a dream. My oath, what a dream. ."
"What dream, Esmond?" Adrian said carefully.
"Nanya," he said. "The fire. ." His face changed, writhing. "They'll burn."
"Who will burn?"
"Vanbert. The Confeds. All of them. They're going to burn, burn."
"Esmond, it's late. Do you think you can sleep now?"
Esmond shook himself again, and something like humanness returned to his eyes. "What. . oh, sorry, brother. Bit of a bad dream. Yes, it's going to be a long day."
* * *
"The man will be impaled, otherwise," Casull said. "He is a criminal."
Adrian sighed; it was not something he wanted to do, but on the other hand. . well, he'd rather be shot than have a sharpened wooden stake up the anus, if he had to choose.
King Casull was present, and his eldest son Tenny-a twenty-year-old version of his father, except that there was a trace of softness around the jaw, of petulance in the set of his mouth. There were a scattering of Islander admirals as well, ships' captains, mercenary officers, and an interested score or so of Adrian's own Emerald slingers. Three of them were serving as the arquebus' crew. Adrian squinted against the bright sunlight; the first target was floating on a barge twenty yards away, tied to a stake and with a Confed infantry shield set up before him. Royal guardsmen kept the crowds well away from this section of the naval dockyards.
"These have two-man crews," Adrian went on. "They load. . thus."
He nodded to his men. The weapon was clamped into a tripod with a pivot joint. The gunner pushed on the butt, and the weapon spun around. He seized and held the muzzle, while the loader bit open a paper cartridge and rammed it and the eight-ounce lead ball down the long barrel. Then he spun it again, taking a horn from his belt.
"You see, lord King, the small pan on the right side? That is where the fine-ground priming powder goes. Then this hammer with the piece of flint in its jaws goes back. ."
"Ah, yes," Casull said. "A flint-and-steel-the sort travellers use."
"Yes, lord King. The flint strikes this portion of the L-shaped steel, pushing it back from over the pan-the sparks fall down onto the powder-the powder burns, the flame goes through a small hole into the barrel and ignites the main charge."
He raised his voice a little. "Gentlemen, there will be a loud crack, a little like thunder."
There were alert nods, dark eyes bright with interest. You know, he thought, this Kingdom of the Isles would seem to be a better place to start "progress" than the mainland. They're a lot less. . hidebound, I think you'd say.
no, Center said. There was more than the usual heavy certainty to its communication. this culture is too intellectually amorphous.
Adrian felt a familiar baffled frustration. Raj cut in: Sure, they'll take and use anything that looks useful. But they're pure pragmatists. Your Emerald philosophers have gotten themselves into a trap-staring up their own arses and trying to find first causes in words, in language. But at least they think about the structure of things; so do the Confeds, when they think at all-they caught it from you. The Islanders just aren't interested; to them, everything you've shown is just a wonderful new trick, to be thrown into the grab bag.
accurate, if loosely phrased, Center said.
Hmmm, Adrian thought. This time he felt the wonderful tension-before-release mental sensation of almost grasping a concept; it was like sex just before orgasm, only better. But they have a lot of. . what was that phrase? Social mobility?
correct, Center said. if anything, an excessive amount.
Sure, you can get ahead, here, Raj said. But you can't stay ahead. Everything here turns on the fall of the dice; the ruler's favor, a lucky pirate raid. This place is as unstable as water, while the mainland's set in granite. You can carve granite into a new shape, though; water will just run through your fingers.
Adrian shook himself back to the world of phenomena; the mental conversation had only taken a few seconds, but he was attracting looks. Most of them were tolerantly amused; the Scholars of the Grove had a solid reputation for otherworldly abstraction.
If only they knew, he thought to himself. Aloud: "Fire!"
The gunner carefully squeezed the trigger. There was a chick-shsss as the hammer came down and the priming caught in a little sideways puff of fire and dirty-white smoke. Then: Bdannggg as the arquebus fired; the cloud of smoke from the main charge was enough to hide the target from Adrian's eyes for a second. Esmond gave a silent whistle of relief beside him; the bullet hadn't missed. Casull's eyebrows went up as well, and the Islander grandees were laughing and slapping Adrian on the back; eight ounces of high-velocity lead had smashed a hole the size of a fist through the Confed shield, through metal facing and plywood and tough leather, and then removed the entire top of the target's head in a spatter of pink-gray froth and whitish bone fragments.
Adrian swallowed. "So, you see, my lord King," he said. "Many such arquebusiers could sweep the decks of an enemy ship, beyond the effective range of archers."
"But not beyond the range of catapults and ballistae," Casull said. "Still, a dreadful weapon, yes. These. . arquebuses? Arquebuses, yes-they can fire faster than catapults, and we can put more of them on a ship. The Confed marines have always been our problem, the Sun God roast their balls; we're better seamen, but as often as not they swarm aboard and take the ship that rams them."
"Lord King, I'm just getting started," Adrian said with a grin. "Next is a much larger version of the arquebus, for use against ships and fortresses."
The King's dark eyebrows looked as if they were trying to crawl into his widow's peak. "Show me!" he commanded.
"This is the weapon," Adrian said, signalling. A half-dozen of his men dragged it over; a bronze tube seven feet long, mounted on a low four-wheeled carriage of glossy hardwood. "I call it a cannon."
The barge teams in the military harbor were busy again; this time they towed out a small and extremely elderly galley. It was listing, and the dockyard workers had stripped it of most of its fittings; they anchored it to a buoy two hundred yards out in the harbor.
Meanwhile Adrian's men were busy around the gun. Adrian gave Casull a running commentary: "First, as you see, lord King, a linen bag full of the gunpowder is pushed down the hollow-the barrel. A wad of felt goes in next, to hold it in place."
The crew shoved the bag home with a long pole, grunting in unison as they slammed it down. "Now the gunner runs a long steel needle through the touch-hole, to pierce the bag, and fills the touch-hole and this little pan on top of the gun with priming powder-finely ground."
"And here is what the cannon will hurl," he said. The team paused for a second to let the King see what they were doing.