26

The Clocksmiths and the Corazhas

The one thing which Maia had been determined to achieve before the celebration of Winternight began was the presentation of the Clocksmiths’ Guild of Zhaö before the Corazhas. Most of the things hanging over his head were things he could not control (and there had been no word from Thara Celehar since his precipitous departure for the north), but this thing at least could happen, and the Corazhas could have two weeks or more to think about it before there would be time for a discussion and a vote. His control was mostly an illusion, especially as he did nothing himself but merely told Csevet what he wished done, but it was better than throwing temper tantrums or going into a decline or any of the other more ostentatious responses to being emperor which occurred to him.

In fact, the Corazhas did not grant an audience to the Clocksmiths’ Guild until the day before the Avar of Barizhan’s scheduled arrival, and even that, Maia was given to understand, was the result of a vast quantity of pushing and prodding. The Prelates’ Council still had not chosen a new Witness for the Prelacy. The new Witness for the Treasury was a very young man, by Corazheise standards, and it looked as if it might be three or four years before he found the confidence to open his mouth. Maia almost regretted Lord Berenar, who had yet to emerge from his first plunge into the depths of the Lord Chancellor’s office, but he reminded himself of just how much more he wanted Berenar there than here and did not repine.

The Clocksmiths’ Guild was represented again by Mer Halezh and Merrem Halezho, this time supported by (or supporting—Maia couldn’t quite tell from their demeanor) another man, older than Mer Halezh and showing a clocksmith’s crouch: even when he straightened from his bow to the emperor, his shoulders stayed hunched. He was introduced as Dachensol Evet Polchina; Maia did not know what precisely that title betokened in the guild, but several of the Corazhas were looking impressed, as if Dachensol Polchina’s presence reassured them that they were not wasting time on a mere cloud-fancy of the emperor’s, as Lord Pashavar had so eloquently put it.

And when the emperor formally invited the Clocksmiths of Zhaö to speak to the Corazhas, it was Dachensol Polchina who stepped forward. He made a deep formal bow to Maia and then bowed, less deeply, to each of the Corazhas in turn. Then he beckoned, and Mer Halezh and Merrem Halezho carried forward a massive draped shape and set it on the table in front of Maia’s chair.

“What is this?” Csevet said, with a cold glance at one of the junior secretaries, who apparently should have known better than to allow any such object in the room without Csevet’s approval. Telimezh moved forward as if he were preparing to fling himself on it.

Dachensol Polchina’s face creased into a beatific smile. “That is the bridge.” Another gesture, and Mer Halezh and Merrem Halezho carefully lifted the linen drape.

Maia’s breath caught.

Beneath the drape was a model of a section of a river—of the Istandaärtha. There were tiny houses on one side and pasture on the other, with little black-and-white dairy cows grazing on green velvet. The road on each side was paved with tiny quartz pebbles, smooth and gleaming like cobbles after rain. The river banks were rocky, with twisted verashme trees showing defiant golden-red blossoms. The river itself was brown and roiling, rendered, he thought, with silk and clusters of fish scales. At one point, a tree trunk surged angrily out of the water; he was amazed at the impression of movement and ferocity, at how deftly the model-maker had conveyed the power of the Istandaärtha.

And in the center of this marvel, the focus and anchor, was the bridge. To Maia’s eye, instantly adapted to the delicacy of the world the model showed, it was a massive thing, a brass and iron monster, four great square towers, two on each bank, throwing out arm after arm toward each other until they met and clasped claws in the middle. He saw, with a jolt that was not surprise, that the spars of the bridge had been engraved to suggest the claws he had fancied. He leaned closer and saw the ugly, benevolent faces of four tangrishi at the top of each tower.

“What better protectors for a steam-powered bridge?” Dachensol Polchina murmured, only loud enough for Maia to hear—although that was partly because the Corazhas’ muttering was growing louder, from the initial gasps of astonishment and admiration on one side and angry disbelief on the other.

“The thing’s ridiculous,” snapped Lord Pashavar.

“It will break under its own weight,” Lord Deshehar protested.

“No boat could possibly get past this monstrosity,” said Lord Isthanar, the Witness for the Universities, and that was apparently the opening Dachensol Polchina wanted.

“Aha!” he said, and nodded to Merrem Halezho. She touched something beneath the model cow pasture, and she must have had a touch of the maza’s gift, for there was a spark and the smell of burning.

“It will take a few minutes to generate enough steam,” Dachensol Polchina said, “though for the real bridge, there would of course be employment for stokers to be sure the river traffic doesn’t have to wait. In the meantime, we will be happy to answer your questions.”

Maia barely heard the ensuing discussion, vehement though it was. He was too entranced by the model. As he looked closer, he could see that there were tiny people among the houses: a woman hanging laundry, a man weeding his vegetable garden, two children playing hider and seeker. There was even a tiny tabby cat sunning itself in a window. On the road toward the bridge, a wagon pulled by two dappled horses had stopped while the driver rummaged for something beneath his seat. Looking to the other side of the river, Maia suddenly spotted the cowherd among the cows, and he barely restrained a crow of delight. The cowherd, goblin-dark, was sitting cross-legged beneath the only tree in the pasture and playing a flute, so carefully rendered that each fingerhole was distinctly visible.

Maia straightened up and said decisively, cutting through the increasingly acrimonious discussion between Corazhas and clocksmiths, “We wish to see the bridge work.”

Lord Pashavar glared at him. “Your Serenity is determined to go ahead with this foolishness?”

“We do not find it foolish,” Maia said, and was surprised at the calmness of his own voice, “and we do not believe that Dachensol Polchina finds it foolish, either.”

“It is not foolish,” Dachensol Polchina agreed. “It is new, which is not the same thing.”

“It is hardly a clock,” said Isthanar, sneering. “Are you quite sure you understand what you are doing?”

“If you find our understanding flawed, you are welcome to explain it to us,” Dachensol Polchina said mildly, with a gesture toward the model.

Isthanar’s stricken silence was covered by the Archprelate saying, “How can you possibly know that when you come to build the real thing, it will support its own weight?”

“It’s not as heavy as it looks,” Mer Halezh said. “You’ll see in a minute.”

At first, Maia could not identify the noise coming from beneath the model, for it had no place in the Verven’theileian, no place in the life of an emperor. It was the whistle of a teakettle coming to the boil.

Merrem Halezho said, triumph snaking out around the corners of her mouth, “We are ready, Serenity.”

“Then, please,” Maia said, and hoped he did not sound as pompous as he felt he must, “show us your bridge.”

Merrem Halezho did something beneath the model, and the whistling stopped. They waited—and even Pashavar seemed to be holding his breath—and then with a slow, jerky movement, two of the bridge’s claws released their grasp and folded back. The rest followed, pair by pair, and then the spars of the bridge lifted like wings and pulled back, one pair at a time, starting in the middle. Maia’s chest felt full of amazement, like a great glowing ball he could barely breathe around.

“The process can be halted at any point,” Dachensol Polchina said, as if he did not know that emperor, Corazhas, secretaries, and all were struck dumb with wonder. “But in case of storms or floods, the bridge can be pulled back onto the banks, as you see. And thus any amount of river traffic can be accommodated.”

It did not happen swiftly or quietly, but as Dachensol Polchina had said, the bridge pulled back almost entirely into its towers.

“It is a tangrisha,” Maia said, and then blushed painfully.

“The tangrisha was one of our inspirations,” Mer Halezh said kindly, “though we also watched a great many spiders.”

“But if it is light enough to do that,” said Lord Deshehar, “how much weight of traffic can it bear?”

The question was like a pebble starting a rockslide. Questions poured forth from the Corazhas, a tumult that enveloped Dachensol Polchina and Mer Halezh, though both of them maintained their composure and their courtesy, which was more than Maia thought he could have done himself.

He leaned closer to Merrem Halezho and said, “Can you make it extend again?”

“Of course, Serenity,” she said, and adjusted something beneath the pasture. Maia watched as the two ends of the bridge reached slowly and yearningly for each other, knowing he was as wide-eyed and entranced as a child listening to a wonder-tale and in that moment not caring. The bridge was more marvelous than any amount of imperial dignity was worth. He watched especially closely as the claws clasped again, seeing the jointed spurs curl around each other into an unbreakable hold. The dappled horses could draw the wagon safely across this bridge; the cowherd and his flute could drive the black-and-white cows back to the barn that waited beyond the houses.

He looked up finally. The Corazhas still surrounded Dachensol Polchina and Mer Halezh, but Lord Pashavar had withdrawn—no more than a few steps, but distinctly putting himself outside the melée.

Maia circled the table to approach him. “You still disapprove, Lord Pashavar?”

“It is a toy,” Pashavar said, angry and contemptuous and perhaps, behind that, a little afraid. “It will waste money and time and no doubt lives—have you considered that, Serenity? The men who will die building this cloud-castle of yours? And in the end, the Istandaärtha will remain unbridged, because it is unbridgeable, and it is naught but a wonder-tale to imagine otherwise.”

Maia flinched a little, both at the twisted echo of his own thoughts and at what amounted to an accusation of murder, but he said steadily, “Our grandfathers must once have said the same thing about airships. But they are now commonplace, and neither our government nor our economy could function without them.”

“A poor choice of analogy, Edrehasivar,” Pashavar said with a sparking glance.

But Maia was ready for that gambit. “No,” he said, “for the wreck that caused our father’s death was not an accident. The blame does not lie with the Wisdom of Choharo, but with the person who made her explode.” Seeing Pashavar was about to argue, he added, “That person could just as easily have sabotaged the axle of a traveling coach. Or the girth of a saddle.”

“None of this means this foolish bridge can possibly be built,” Pashavar said, his ears flicking almost petulantly.

“We trust the judgment of the Clocksmiths’ Guild. In the end, that is the question on which any decision must be based, for we do not have the knowledge to judge the design ourself—and neither do you.” He resisted the urge to use the informal thou, even though he wanted to signal how exasperated he was with Pashavar’s obstinacy. No amount of obstinacy made Pashavar deserving of the insult.

“But should we trust the Clocksmiths’ judgment?” Pashavar said, using the plural “we” and gesturing widely. “If the advances necessary to make this bridge more than a cunning toy have truly happened, should the universities not be the ones making the demonstration?”

Maia looked across the room at Lord Isthanar, who had also withdrawn from the excited—and more than slightly tempestuous—discussion around the clocksmiths. He had a dour expression on his face, as closed as a miser’s strongbox.

“We think that is an excellent question, Lord Pashavar,” Maia said, “but we would not ask it of the clocksmiths.”

Pashavar caught his meaning, and from the scowl on his face, it gave him a good deal to think about. Perhaps it would divide the force of his resistance.

Maia returned to the model and asked Merrem Halezho to make the bridge work one more time.