Maker of Fire

Fedso’as, 6 Brewers’ Row, Is’syal

My father was out in the backyard, on his back staring up at the stars.

"Can we talk, Dad?"

"I'm not going anyway. Grab a seat." He sat up and patted the grass next to him.

"Grandmother is a wow. I mean she is wonderful. Why did you wait so long to see her again?"

"That is a really difficult question, Fed. We didn't part on good terms and once I had left, even when it was years later, I couldn't find the courage to face her."

"But you said you ran away because of your father, not your mother."

"That's true, I did run away because of my father. I didn't want to inherit. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to have adventures. I wanted to explore. I didn't want to be what he wanted me to be."

"So what about grandmother?" Dad looked at me with a very strange face and then laid back down and stared at the sky.

"I'm tempted to say that you're not old enough to understand. I certainly didn't when I was your age. I've tried hard to ensure that you and Troyeepay never have to face the choices I faced. When families fight, there are no winners, Fed. When you fight with your family, you conflict with the people who should understand you the best. When they hurt you, it feels like a betrayal by the people you should be able to trust the most in the world. When you can't reconcile with your family, it makes everything that people say about love and trust look like a lie."

I watched one solitary tear gather at the corner of his eye and then slide across his temple to be lost in his hair.

"I believe that my father never even tried to understand me but I was probably a difficult child to understand. I was very different from my peers who bullied me just because I was different. Despite being a boy, I had enough magic to become a healer or an adept of Landa. I think that I might have been happy to be a scholar of Galt, but that shrine never admits men no matter how talented. My father couldn't understand that I might actually prefer studying at a shrine to the more manly arts of clearing the land and raising stock and crops.

"I believe that my mother did understand me, at least in part, but mother sided with father. Mother was all about duty and responsibility. It is the duty of men to tend the land and build the bridges and roads, fish the rivers, and hunt the beasts; and it is the duty of women to intercede with the gods and do the work of the shrines, craft goods, run the businesses, and defend the home and family.

"I didn't fit, Fed, but my parents never tried to find a way where I might be able to fit. I was miserable and could only look forward to a future filled with more misery, doing something I knew I already hated. So I left. For many years, I stayed far away from my family for fear that if they found me, they would force me to take up the duty I never wanted but was born to. Some of that avoidance was shame because the duty I ran away from was then given to my older sister. Because of my selfishness, she took up what I fled from and if she hated me for it, I don't think I could bear it."

Dad wiped away the tears with his sleeve and sat up. He looked so unhappy that I had to hug him, "I'm sorry, Dad, I didn't know that..."

"Don't apologize, Fed. These are my failings, not yours." He hugged me back. "Your grandmother is a great healer and has the love and respect of many people. Don't let my troubles keep you from getting to know her. And now child, you should go to bed. The half-night bell with be ringing soon and growing girls with lots of magic need to get adequate sleep."

---

Emily, 6 Brewers’ Row, Is’syal

I had no idea why a large talking shark was wearing pink chiffon and swimming around the teacher's desk in my old homeroom at Idaho Falls High School. What was weird was the red lipstick that appeared out of nowhere and did her non-existent lips.

"What do you think, Luv?" the shark asked. "Is this a good shade or not?"

"What other colors are there?" I asked

"Pink or peach," she smiled, showing off a mouth full of razor-sharp flesh rippers.

"Stick with the red," I advised. "Pink and peach are just not your colors."

"Why thank you, Luv. Now the reason I've asked you here today is to tell you about kelp. Kelp is very important. You are going to need some. Oh, not right away, but I wasn't going to let that suck-up Mueb steal all your attention, so I decided to slip in while there was still an opening."

"Mueb? No, wait. You're another one of the eleven bothersome gods, aren't you?"

"That's right, Luv. I'm Vassu, the water god. Now about kelp, you need to burn it and collect the ashes. First, wash them with water and boil the water to get sodium carbonate.

"Washing soda," I said.

"Oooooo! Very good. I like bright students." She swam through the air above the desk singing, "yes yes yes yes yes!"

"So you're invading my precious dream time to tell me about washing soda?"

"No, Luv, there's more and it's the important part." She suddenly looked up and to the left. "Drat, Giltak is coming. I gotta go before they catch me cutting the queue. Now remember this, Emily: dissolve the solid remains from the ash with excess sulfuric acid and you get the halides you need. Don't forget to invent glass first and ether too! You'll need it to extract the bromine. Gotta go, Luv! Ta ta for now!"

And then I woke up, in the guest room at the home of Hessakos and Oyyuth, wondering why these meddling gods kept mentioning glass.

---

Lisaykos, 6 Brewers’ Row, Is’syal

I admit I was feeling a bit envious that Emily and my son seemed to have a more comfortable relationship after three days than I had with her after a season and a half. I consoled myself that they had been through life and death together in dire circumstances. Sometimes experiences like that forge unbreakable friendships.

It was a revelation that he had carried her into the dining room with her sitting on his arm, her arm around his neck for balance; and then he put her into the chair at the head of the table, which he already prepared with a pile of cushions. It was so seamless and natural that they seemed like old friends. Then he put a beaker of hot tea in front of her.

"Sausage roll?" he asked. She nodded. "Grilled cheese on bread?" She shook her head no. "Then let me give you two sausage rolls." She shook her head no.

"Seriously, Emily, you need to eat more. I can feel your ribs when I pick you up." He scowled at her. She gave him an annoyed look back. I couldn't help but chuckle that someone else was on the receiving end of Emily's killer glares for once. Emily then shared her annoyed look with me. I answered with a raised eyebrow. Fed'so'as giggled and Oyyuth was amused. Troyeepay was confused, not following the exchange at all but he was only seven. The youngest, Amoythoy, wasn't even at the table since she was still in the nursery with her wet nurse.

"I have noticed that if you leave the right kind of savory roll out within Emily's reach, that it will mysteriously disappear around the third bell," I remarked.

"I'll wrap some up that you can take with you," Oyyuth said to Emily with a motherly smile that said Emily had no choice in the matter. So far, I liked everything I saw of my new daughter-in-law.

"How do you know so much about Emily, Grandmom?" Fedso'as asked.

"Emily is currently my patient," I replied. "She suffered a bad head injury several years ago which wasn't treated correctly and she lost the ability to speak because of it. I specialize in head trauma and mind injuries as a healer, which is why she's my patient. I'll be working on restoring her ability to speak over the next two seasons." I looked at Emily, "we need to get back to working on that."

Emily wrote on the tablet and held it so I could read across the table: "I forgot to practice for the last five days."

I deliberately smiled at her, "I know."

Emily hurriedly wrote again and held it up: "You have a scary smile."

I kept smiling at her, "I know." Emily gave me a roll of her eyes and my son laughed and smiled for the first time since I arrived at his house.

"Hey Grandmom, do they need help at the shrine?"

"Of course they do. The place has so many injured people that the overflow has spilled into the great hall."

"Can I come with you and help today?" Fedso'as asked, leaning forward in her chair.

I tried to keep the panic I felt off my face. "The work for someone who isn't a healer or scholar is hard, Fedso'as. It's changing sheets and feeding people too weak to feed themselves, washing dishes, emptying necessary pots. Many of the injured are poor people who stink because they have no place to bathe or Coyn who are weak and easy to break and must be handled with special care because of that."

"I want to help," my granddaughter said, looking right at me intently. "Please."

My son looked at me with sympathy, "you will find that she is a hard worker and can follow instructions." Then he mindcasted: "It will ruin your plan to keep your position from her, but it's up to you. If you do take her with you, I do not think you will be disappointed with her. She has the right temperament to be a healer."

"Dad," Fedso'as accused her father in that unique whine that all children master for use on their parents, "you're mindcasting grandmom, aren't you?"

He smiled, "maybe."

"What do you think, Oyyuth?" I asked, looking for more information upon which to make a decision.

"She will not be an embarrassment to you, Mother Lisaykos," Oyyuth said, knowing full well what my position was, but using the appropriate address for one's mother-in-law in a family setting.

I looked at my granddaughter who I barely knew and decided to take the risk, "alright, young lady, I will take you to the shrine with me, and I will make sure they work you until your fingers fall off."

"Yay!" she bounced with excitement, all smiles. "Hey Dad, were you around when there was that big explosion yesterday at the fifth bell out on the lava plains?"

"We were so close to it that I've never seen Cadress fly that fast before to get away," my son replied. Then we all noticed Emily had started writing. If Emily had something to say about it, I suspected it would be interesting. She was drawing a picture too. Yes, it would be worth waiting for.

She wrote: "It's called a phreatic explosion. That's where water under the ground runs into hot lava and turns to steam. The water was probably floodwater pouring down through the volcanic rift and meeting molten rock. Hot lava is ten times hotter than boiling water, hot enough that it will turn a lake full of water into steam instantly. Steam occupies 1,700 times more space than the water it once was, but there isn't that much space available underground, so the steam expands in the direction of least pressure, which is upwards in this case, breaking and destroying all the rocks in its path as it tries to escape to the surface. This is what caused the explosion. As we watched, we saw pieces of rock the size of houses thrown thousands of hands into the air."

"So if this beaker had water in it and it turned into steam suddenly, it would use up one thousand seven hundred times the volume of this beaker?" I asked for clarification.

Emily nodded.

"How does compare to gunpowder?" I asked.

Emily looked surprised for half a breath and then her thinking face appeared. She erased the tablet with the blunt end of the stylus, placed the tablet flat on the table, and then started writing. I leaned over so I could see what she was writing but it was incomprehensible to me:

m.wt. about 100 g/mole (s)

estimate 1.5 g/cc

(100 g/mole)/(1.5 g/cc) = approx 67 cc/mol

1 mole saltpetre + C solid --> 2 moles gas = 44.8 liters = 44,800 cc

668.6

67 ⟌ 44800

-40200

4600

-4020

580

-536

44

-40.2

gas expansion of gunpowder = approx 670 times solid volume

ignores PV=nRT temperature effects

steam expansion more than two times bigger

"Oh wow," Fedso'as got excited watching Emily crunch through that cryptic column of numbers, "that's long division using the Queen's numbers. You're so fast. That's amazing, Emily. How do you do that?"

Emily had filled the tablet so she wrote on the very bottom of the tablet: "practice."

Frankly, watching Emily do that sent a chill down my back. Whatever was inside of her head was unique and somewhat frightening. It meant that if Emily made a lot of gunpowder, she could destroy entire towns.

Emily erased the tablet and wrote: "Vassu is a water god, yes?"

Well, it wasn't the first time the topic got changed this morning, though it had been my granddaughter careening from topic to topic before this.

"That's right, Emily," my son answered. "She's usually depicted as a young woman pouring water from a bucket next to a well."

"Is she ever depicted as a fish?" Emily wrote.

"That's silly, Emily," my granddaughter pronounced, "of course not."

"Not always, Fed," my son corrected her gently. "Emily, Vassu is the god most revered by the Sea Coyn on the coast. They usually depict her as a non-scaly fish called a shark."

Emily started thinking so deeply after that her eyes were fixed on nothing in this world. My son noticed it too.

"Emily," I broke her out of her descent into deep thought and she looked up at me, "did you dream of Vassu as a shark last night?"

Her expression was profoundly unhappy as she nodded briefly in the affirmative.

"That's twice in one rotation," my son said with concern.

"Was there any urgency this time?" I asked. Emily made a very interesting face as if that wasn't a simple question. "That should have been an easy question to answer, dear heart. What's wrong?"

Emily wrote a list:

1. Kelp for silver halides in the camera - can wait

2. Glass - both Mueb and Vassu said to get this done before anything else

3. Vassu said that Giltak was next

Then she wrote: "I finished Tiki's revelation so now I wish they would leave me alone."

"If it's any help, Emily," my son tousled her hair, "I can pick up some kelp next time the King sends me out to the coast." Emily nodded and attempted not to look quite so miserable.

"What do silver halides in the camera mean, little one?" I asked. Emily picked up the stylus but my son stopped her hand. "A camera is a device that can capture images, mother. Emily described it to me while we were waiting out the storm."

"You did it again, Emily," I sighed. "We should have someone following you around all the time to write down your ideas as they come out so we don't miss any."

"That wouldn't be a bad idea," my son laughed.

There was the sound of a door closing abruptly and then footsteps running in the hallway. A burly man with mixed dark brown and silver hair appeared in the doorway. The resemblance to Oyyuth was strong.

"Sorry to interrupt, folks," he pulled a strand of hair away from his face. "Sis, we've lost all pressure on the water feed and the roof tank is now empty. Haven't had any pressure since just after the half-night bell."

"That's not too bad," Oyyuth replied, "We only have one malting tank going instead of all four."

"It's not just us, sis. Chet said there's no pressure below the fifth ring road throughout the city."

"I'll check the water line to our tank," my son got up and walked out.

"How full are the brewery tanks?" Oyyuth asked her brother.

"Half full," he replied, "we could probably supply everyone on the street for personal use for two or three days, like the last time the pressure failed."

Just then the bell at the citadel and the bells at the Shrine of Galt started ringing and didn't stop.

My son ran back into the room and caught my eye from across the table, "I can give you a lift to the palace."

"I will take you up on that. Emily should come too." He nodded his agreement.

I turned to my granddaughter, "sorry Fed, I'll try to come to get you when I'm done at the palace." She just nodded, trying hard not to be disappointed.

I got up and walked over to my very quiet grandson. "You don't say much, Troyeepay."

"That's what meals are like, Grandmother," this perfect little gentleman said with great solemnity. "Fed talks enough for three people so it's alright." An angelic smile lit up his face. Everyone else, other than my granddaughter, laughed.