Esmond Gellert was sitting up in bed, his muscular chest heaving and sheening with sweat. His eyes were wide and staring, and cloth ripped in the hand that held a pillow. An Islander woman crouched naked against the far wall, sobbing.
“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.