Daily Life There
I drew the reins, and the horse blew a wet snort. We had stopped on the well-kept lane beside the fields, out where farmland spread vast beyond the walls of Stemwind.
"Do you see?"
Canniel didn't care whether his knees took the dirt. He sank down and worked the soil between his fingers. Ash had stolen its color. What should have been earth had gone gray.
"……This year's harvest will be a hard one as well."
A moderate fall of ash is an enormous gift to farming. The great breadbasket of the Esteria continent, for instance, lies in the southeast, comparatively near the volcano, and it thrives for exactly that reason. The westerlies blow only northward, so the ash settles there in just the gentle measure that does a field good. The plains around Stemwind had once boasted yields to rival it.
Since last year, that had changed. Ash erupted from Red Hill had poured down in quantities enough to blanket even the north of Esteria. Too much ash does not merely ruin the soil. It roofs over the sky and shuts out the sun, and so the North's harvests had been cut in half. If a region as distant as this, and as lightly touched, had come to such a pass, one hardly needed to look to know how the central provinces were faring, where the ash fell heavier still.
By the tale's own setting, the great volcano would vomit more ash with every year to come. It would spread across the North and out over the sea beyond Lighthouse Village, veiling the sunlight and dragging the world's temperature down. And in time the demons who lived past the continent of Esteria would ride that ash-hung fog, cross the frozen sea, and come south into these lands.
"Difficult days," Canniel said. "The Emperor and the central nobles have forgotten their fear of the demons. They've gone blind to everything but filling their own pockets."
"There's no promise the ash will fall any lighter from here on. We need a plan."
"And what would you have us do in the face of nature's wrath?"
"Farmers with long experience will know what to do when the ash comes down heavy. We should hear them out and set their knowledge down as a code of practice. Encouraging the fisheries, for a while, might serve as a stopgap as well."
Not that the fisheries would survive either, if the ash kept coming. I went on, even-voiced.
"For now we're draping cloth over the crops so the ash doesn't fall on them directly. But the light is already poor, and with cloth thrown over them on top of that, the plants can't grow as they should. In the end we'll have to replace it with glass."
"Glass is expensive. It breaks. We cannot make enough of it to cover the fields. Find something else."
"A great many farms in the central provinces have already made the change. We have to follow them."
In the central lands, where the capital stood, they were already trial-running steam locomotives. Mass-producing glass was nothing to them. Long before any method of mass production existed, it was the Oxburg Empire that had refined the craft of glass, almost to a geometric art, for the sole purpose of keeping the ash at bay. The imperial capital's very byname was the Glass City. The North, frontier of the Empire, had received less ash, and so its glasscraft had never advanced. Small wonder northerners were called country bumpkins.
"They have artisans who produce the glass in quantity themselves," Canniel said. "In the North we have no artisans, no method of mass production, and no foundation to build one on. The cost cannot be met. Find another way."
"The center managed it, so we can too. I'll look into it. We won't be able to cover every field the way they have, but in a crisis this dire we can at least guarantee a minimum harvest."
"……And you believe you can look into it?"
"I'll do my best."
Within the Oxburg Empire, the art of mass-producing glass was a secret held by the artisans and by the noble houses that kept them. But who was I? I had lived twenty-five years on a twenty-first-century Earth where glass could stop a bullet. To the people of this world it was cutting-edge engineering, a guarded confidence. On Earth it was the sort of thing that spilled down a screen after a few searches. A humanities man by birth, I didn't know how to make glass itself—but I had picked up, secondhand, how one made a great deal of it. Melt tin and glass together and the difference in density sets the glass afloat upon the tin, and sheets of plate glass come easily, and in quantity. The fine points would need correction by experiment, but with the theory already in hand it was hardly a difficult matter.
For a while Canniel walked his domain at an easy pace. He spoke again only when we stood on a hill from which the whole of it lay open below.
"I hear you've put your name in for the Human Lighthouse Order's entrance trial."
"Yes."
Not long ago I had had Helga enter me for it.
"I know you've reached the lower grade of Sword Expert. Even so, the Order's trial is no gentle thing. Your rank spares you the age limit, but they still recommend that one sit the trial only after coming of age."
"I know."
Canniel studied me, and went on.
"What moved you to apply?"
"To test my limits."
"The Order's entrance trial is not the only way to test them."
Cornered, I had no choice but to lay the truth out.
"If I stay as I am, I'll have to contest the succession with Ai. When that day comes, Father—will you name me heir?"
"I cannot."
He said it cleanly, without a moment's pause.
"You cannot inherit the march. You can hardly claim not to know why. Do not dare harbor such a thought."
"Then I have to find my own way to live. That's why I applied."
In truth I had other designs. I knew every setting of The Esteria Chronicles, including the places where the protagonist came into his power. The road that led to Lighthouse Village. There, I would take a fated opportunity of my own.
"When do you leave?"
"I mean to depart with Helga at noon tomorrow."
"I'll write a letter to the commander of the Lighthouse. Take it with you."
The answer seemed to satisfy him. Canniel nodded.
Piece of trash.
I'm his son. Does he have to shut me out this completely?
I swallowed the rest of the curses. If I could seize that opportunity cleanly, all of this bitterness would be over soon enough. The moment I had power I would steal the house's fortune, cast off both given name and family name, and raise a den of flesh and pleasure in the southeast. Until then, I only had to endure a little longer. I swung into the saddle and put my revenge off to another day.
There are many advantages to being born noble, but the finest of them is never having to tend one's own messes. The carriage was ready, the baggage seen to, an escort plastered on thick. All I had to do was bring myself. Thanks to that, I had been able to write, right up until this morning, a report on the mass production of glass. The particulars still needed shoring up by experiment, but the frame was already in place, and plate glass in quantity would not be long in coming—provided the cost of materials could be met.
I was just about to step out when someone knocked. A small child stood there, rubbing green eyes as if he hadn't slept properly, and addressed me. My half-brother, Ai de Jevitz.
"I heard you're going to the Human Lighthouse Order's entrance trial."
"Ai, if your mother finds out you came to my room, she won't let it pass."
"Hmph. Let her. She already has me waiting on that old wizard all day long."
The mouth was rough, and the face was not. I let out a short laugh.
"Marjorie is an excellent wizard. Learn hard at his side."
"Excellent? If that shriveled old geezer counts as an excellent wizard, then I'm done with magic as of today! I'd rather teach myself! How is a person allowed to teach worse than a moldy spellbook?"
In truth, Marjorie was not a poor teacher. Ai's talent for magic was simply so extraordinary that it had stirred the old man's pride, and he was driving the boy through the curriculum far faster than it had ever been meant to go. Overshadowed by Bjorn, perhaps—but where magic was concerned, Ai was a genius without peer. The child was so clever he treated not only his own age, but children far older than himself, as if they were infants.
Aileen was not pecking at him without reason. If a child of mine showed that much promise, I would have driven him just as madly. I understood a parent's heart. The trouble was that the intensity went too far. And in time that magic would bear fruit. Ai would land a true blow on the demon-bound Bjorn—one that not even his father, a Sword Master, had ever managed.
"I want to learn the sword, too. Better to pant like a stray mutt and swing a blade than spend all day shut in a back room breathing the sour stink coming off an old man's feet. At least then I'd get some fresh air."
"Sounds to me like you don't want to do either."
"Right! Honestly, my one wish is just to lie in bed and sleep as much as I want!"
Ai rolled across the floor, the very picture of injustice. At moments like this he was unmistakably a child, and that, politics aside, was why I found him cute.
"Ai, even if you never become the heir, you're a son of House de Jevitz. One day you'll have to lead the people of this North. If you don't study hard now, they'll look down on you later."
"Why do I have to drag those morons around? I don't want to argue with empty-headed idiots like that. Can't you just do it, Brother? I want to loaf. Maybe a little magic research when I get bored. Yeah?"
The empty heads he meant were the lords of the North, their vassals, and the counselors who had drunk their fill of ink. This twelve-year-old was already fit to take the house's business in hand without embarrassing anyone. Ai himself would rather have died.
"If you leave for the Lighthouse, who am I supposed to play with? There's nobody I can actually talk to."
"I'll be back in three months. Hold on a little."
"So when we meet again, you'll be in the Human Lighthouse Order?"
"Yeah. And you'll be taller than you are now."
I said it like a line out of some drama, and stroked his hair.
"Have a good trip. I'll be waiting."
"Yeah. You take care, too."
I said my goodbyes to Ai and went out past the castle walls, bound for Lighthouse Village. Carts laden with supplies, horses, and knights of the Lighthouse Order packed the paved road until there was hardly room to stand.
"Lord Bjorn, the preparations are complete."
Helga, senior knight of the Human Lighthouse Order, appeared as if on cue to assure me that everything was in order.
"Good. Let's go."
I drew my cloak closed and climbed into the carriage.