"But—"
"You heard it out of his own mouth, Teo," Kasha agreed. "He was perfectly willing to sacrifice himself for them, and at what age? Seventeen, eighteen? At twenty his people have been in flight for years and he's suffered with every one of them; he'll buy them peace and safety with whatever coin it takes. His blood, yours, or mine."
"But the fact is, he won't roll over us unless we stand in his way—which, I trust, we're too wise to do," Zorsha continued, as Teo subsided into the chair, red-faced and abashed. "And what he's offering—Felaras, it's tempting. If I were in the Master's seat, I'd take it. We're not just one man anymore; we're not Duran. We're an ongoing organization, and we'll live beyond the span of any one man. We have the potential, not only to advise and aid a potentially very strong leader, but all those who succeed him. Have you thought what that could mean to the Order in particular—and the world in general? We could help to foster hundreds, maybe a thousand years of peace and learning, if we can stay uncorrupted by power. And I think that because of our organization we can."
Felaras nodded, slowly—and in her own mind eliminated Teo from the "competition" for the Master's seat altogether. Though Teo had had all night to consider what Jegrai had told him, his only thoughts had been personal, and confused. Zorsha had cut straight to the heart of the matter, and seen the long-view possibilities, positive and negative.
And being Felaras, she could not be less than honest with the three so close to her.
"Teo—what would you say if I told you I don't think you've got it in you to sit in my place?" she asked quietly.
Kasha and Zorsha went very quiet, and froze in their chairs.
Teo's face was suffused with only relief. "I'd thank the gods, Master. Honestly." Then he started a little, and his eyes widened. "Do you mean that? You're pulling me out?"
She nodded slowly.
He closed his eyes and sagged against the back of the chair. "Oh, gods. Master Felaras, you will never know how happy you've made me. Every time I thought about having to make decisions—oh, gods, I just got so knotted up inside I wanted to puke." He opened his eyes again, and there was no shadow of falsehood in them. "Zorsha, you can have it all, with my blessing! Gods, I can just be me again. . . ."
Zorsha looked stunned.
"It had to come some time, and soon," Felaras told him. "There can only be one successor in the end. You're it, lad. I'm not sure whether to give you congratulations or condolences."
Zorsha shook himself a little, and managed to smile weakly at her. "From all I've seen, both. Well. Thank you . . . I think."
Felaras laughed. "Lad, just now you sounded so like me you could have been my echo! All right—Teo's brought us Jegrai's offer. You've all given your opinions and they match mine. We're in for a leg; we might just as well go in for the whole lamb."
Zorsha nodded. "What's first?"
"Those Talchai that Jegrai thinks are on his heels. Kasha, I want you to consult with your father about what it would take to truly crush an army of three or four thousand at the Teeth. That includes more fire-throwers than we currently have—both mortars and hand-cannon. Zorsha, I want figures on how long it would take to make those fire-throwers and the ammunition for them. Teo, get back down there and tell Jegrai he's got a bargain."
She looked about at her aides, her successor, and felt a kind of perverse thrill of excitement.
"All right, don't just stand there, people," she said, feeling an upwelling of energy. "Lets move!"
CHAPTER TEN
The workroom was swept clean, and there was only one source of flame: a tiny candle sheltered by a glass chimney. Zorsha took no chances when working with explosives; no Seeker would, nor would any of those of the Watchers whose duties included handling such things.
"This is what makes the lightnings?" Yuchai asked, regarding the little pile of black powder in the palm of his outstretched hand with doubt and puzzlement.
"Only that," Zorsha agreed. "Doesn't look like much, does it?"
"Not really." Yuchai poured it carefully back into the little leather sack Zorsha held open, and dusted his hands off on a bit of cloth. "It looks like dirt. Or ashes."
Zorsha grinned, a little tightly. "Trust me, it isn't dirt, and it's every bit as dangerous as real lightning. Listen, Yuchai, Felaras gave me open-ended permission to show you whatever you wanted to know in the meeting I had with her last night—and that 'everything' includes the fire-throwers. You told me a while ago that Jegrai wanted you to learn about them. Well, now Felaras figures he should know. But we're dealing with perilous stuff here—there've been Seekers and Watchers both blown to little bits just because some tiny thing went wrong. Still want to go on? It isn't just the explosives that are dangerous—even knowing about how they work could put your life in danger, outside these walls. There've been members of the Order tortured to death over this stuff."
He hefted the little bag of black powder. Yuchai bit his lip, but shook his head stubbornly. "I want to know. Even if Jegrai hadn't asked me to learn about it, I'd have wanted to know. You told me it wasn't magic. That meant it was something anybody could learn. If anybody could, I wanted to."
"I'm going to start by showing you a few things. First, I'm going to light a little bit of this stuff in the open." Zorsha poured a tiny pile of the explosive powder on a metal plate, set the plate on the workbench, and carefully uncovered the candle. With equal care he touched the candle to the pile. Yuchai watched in fascination as it sparked, and then went up in a poof of smoke, consumed in a bare instant of time.
"Now, this little paper tube has about the same amount of the powder packed into it." Zorsha took one of the tiny firecrackers used at festivals out of a metal-lined drawer in his workbench. "There's also a little bit of the powder wound into the paper fuse—that's the twist of paper sticking out of the end. Now watch."
He put the cracker on the plate, lit the fuse, and stood back. The fuse was a short one; he'd barely gotten out of the way when the cracker exploded. Yuchai jumped nearly a foot into the air.
"Now . . . logic, Yuchai. What was the difference between the firecracker and the pile of gunpowder?"
The boy's brows knitted for a moment.
"Think hard."
Yuchai shook his head, defeated.
"In the firecracker the force of burning was confined. It had nowhere to go, so it broke its container."
Yuchai's eyes lit. "like putting a lid on a boiling pot?"
Zorsha chuckled with delight. "Damn good!" Impulsively he hugged Yuchai's thin shoulders, and the boy's whole face lit up. "Now watch this."
He took another firecracker and this time put a small metal measuring cup over it, leaving only the fuse sticking out. He lit the fuse.
This time Yuchai was prepared for the noise and didn't jump, but his mouth formed a soundless "oh" when the metal measure was thrown into the air and off the table.
"Now, what was the difference there?"
"The—force was more confined?"
"Partially. It was also confined so that it could only go in one direction. Obviously, the force was too small to move the table, so it could only move the cup."
"You use the—confined force—to throw things?" Yuchai hazarded. "like a catapult, only farther and faster?"
"In part; look here." He rummaged through his document-drawer and pulled out a drawing of one of the hand-cannon. "Now, this is a drawing of a fire-thrower—a small one. You pack the explosive powder down in here, see? Then you add paper, you stuff it in so that it blocks all the cracks, so that the force can't escape around the edges of whatever you're going to use as shot. Then you put in the shot, then more paper. The shot is usually a round metal ball, very heavy."