Maker of Fire

Emily, at the palace

(continued from part 38)

"Might I suggest we let in people to listen while Emily and the watermaster talk?" Bobbo suggested. "That way, the people who need to know about what is happening become informed about how this will affect the city. We can reorganize into a formal meeting after when they are done."

"Bobbo, why can't I make you my chief minister?" Imstay asked.

"Because every time you ask me, I say no." Bobbo grinned up at his King. I had a feeling this question had come up many times before between these two.

"That's a good suggestion, General," Aylem said. "Imstay, let us explain to the people outside what is happening in here and then let them in."

"Both of us?" He frowned. He didn't look like he wanted to share the center of attention.

"Or just you, if you want," the Queen had managed to shed her temper for now. "I was just thinking that if the ward masters and the crafts and the lords saw that you and I and the shrines were in this together, it might make things go smoother. The city needs to pull together as one right now or a lot of people will suffer."

Imstay drooped. "That has a lot of merits. I would like to ask that I go first and that I do the speaking." He pinched his nose and scowled, "you must think I'm so petty."

"No, Imstay, I don't. You are concerned about the potential erosion of your authority because I'm an undefined power center nipping at your heels and it worries you, and the balance between the shrines and the throne has always been difficult. You are not petty. You are conflicted between your love for your family and your duty to the kingdom. You are grieving and not allowed to show it and now you must deal with a flood and a potentially failed harvest. I will follow where you lead in this. This is not the time for faction games." Aylem was really batting them out of the park at the moment.

General Bobbo saw his opening. "Alright, Mighty One, you lead. Great One?" Bobbo gestured for the Queen to take the spot next to the King. The Queen walked over and stood next to him. It was crazy that he was this huge man, and she was still taller than him by half a head. Her hair was longer too. Poor guy.

Imstay held out his arm to escort her. The Queen blinked in surprise and then instantly smiled and took it.

"Oh dear," Bobbo said, "how does the shrine precedence work in this case?"

"Kamagishi goes next," Lisaykos replied smoothly, "because the local shrine always takes precedence in its hometown. I go last." She smiled at him. I think that smile was on purpose. The poor watermaster was standing there gaping.

The four silverhairs processed out the door that Bobbo opened for them and then closed.

I started writing out a series of questions while we waited. I could hear Imstay's voice in the corridor outside talking. While that was going on, I noticed four women in red robes placing stools at the corners of the shoved-together tables and sitting down. Each one had several parchment scrolls but no ink. I had no idea what that was about.

I nudged the watermaster and passed him a tablet, where I had scribbled: "let's get the trivia out of the way. How much head is there between the reservoir to the tank under the park? Are there any pumps in either of the two systems? How much distance between reservoir and city in pipe footage? What is the enclosed aqueduct made of? Is it circular or square or rectangular or some other shape? Where are there valves? and what kind are they?

"Ah, Sure, little missy, but what's this head you're talking about?"

I sat down on the table cross-legged and started writing. Damn, it's times like this I wished I could talk.

"What's the difference in elevation from the reservoir to the tank under the park in front of the palace?"

"Don't know," he scratched his chin. "Is it important?"

I just about collapsed. I pointed to the distance question.

"Oh, the reservoir is two wagon-days away, but I usually ride a mule, which is faster so I can get there in less than a day. If it's an emergency, like now, I get a ride on a winged mount."

Okay...fuzzy thinking on distance and time. Somebody needed some basic physics lessons. And I needed to calculate what the gravitational constant was in units of hands and wagon-days. Was it safe to assume it was close to the gravitation constant on Earth? Did they have any distance measures between hands and wagon-days? Come to think of it, what did they do for surveying?

No, no, I needed to stay on track. I pointed at the material for the aqueduct question.

"Baked clay and most of it is buried, except when it breaks," he said. "The aqueduct is square, more or less."

About this time, I noticed that people were walking in quietly out of the corner of my eye. I waited until I saw the King and Queen sit down and then I wrote: "Looks like people are here. So go back to what you were saying about the two problems and start from the beginning."

"Alrighty, little Emily," he pointed to where the aqueduct crossed the river on the schematic. I got back to my feet to see.

"We have two problems, little one. The first was that a wall of mud came down right here and cut the aqueduct at the Rig River. We already fixed that but the water won't flow now. Usually, when the water doesn't want to go, we hire some contract mages and have them push the water through until it flows by itself. Usually doesn't take more than two day bells and four mages. But I've exhausted every contract mage in the city, all 53 of them, and the water won't move. The last attempt had 20 mages and we exhausted every one of them. That's the first problem."

There was significant murmuring over that pronouncement by the watermaster.

"Now we've got a full pool under the parade ground in front of the palace but we got backflow coming into the system up the drains because of the flood and it's crossed over to the supply side on the three lowest rings. Normally, we keep the valves feeding the mains open to prevent bad backflow problems and cut off water service temporarily at the lower rings of the city where there's flooding. But because of the break in the line at the Rig River, we closed the flow down to preserve the water supply.

"So the second problem is that we cut water service below the fifth ring road because it's mixed with backflow from the flood." I nodded my head. That made perfect sense to me. Floodwaters are notoriously dirty and unhealthy.

"At the rate the river is falling, we'll be out of flood conditions tomorrow. A full pool under the parade ground can flush out the entire system but I don't want to do it because right now, that's the only safe water in the city. I'm getting ready to cut off everyone but the citadel and the shrine and start rationing everyone else until we can get the aqueduct flowing."

I wrote: "So if you can solve the aqueduct problem, the backflow problems go away above the lowest rings; and when the flood recedes you can flush the system, but only if you get the aqueduct flow back. So the real problem that needs solving is the aqueduct and the rest is just correct procedure to preserve the supply on hand."

"Yes, exactly." He smiled. "You really do understand water."

Water flow wasn't hard to understand but I realized that he might be as sharp as a marble. I wondered what sort of pay and prestige came with his job and if there was more to him than what I observed so far.

I wrote out my next question: "Where are the valves and what is their design?"

"What do you mean, design? There's only one way to stop the flow, missy."

I looked at him incredulously.

"There are other ways?" he asked, somewhat timidly.

"Many," I wrote.

"Oh." He scratched his head, "guess we should be talking together later when this is over."

I nodded.

"Everywhere you see a brown square, that's a valve," he pointed them out to me on the schematic.

"And they are all open?" I wrote.

"Yes, every valve is open," he said.

"And you bled all the air out of the system?" I wrote.

"What? A little air is no problem."

I think my jaw must have detached, bounced out of the palace, down the main thoroughfare, out the city gates, and into the Salt River, where it took a boat to the coast.

"Your precog is so impressive," I heard Lisaykos say to Kamagishi softly.

"Emily's face is impressive," Kamagishi replied. "Now I want to know what the problem is with air in the aqueduct."

"Is air in the line a problem?" the watermaster asked.

"Probably," I wrote.

So, they had a twenty-something-mile-long water line from a reservoir with an unknown amount of hydraulic head. They just fixed a break at its lowest dip going over a river. They reopened the line section by section by hand, with no way to bleed out air pockets in a square ceramic pipe. Now I needed to confirm my suspicion.

"How many valves were closed when fixing the break at the river?" I wrote.

"Every valve was closed, missy. We always do it that way for safety."

"You reopened them starting closest to the reservoir?" I wrote.

"That's right." he beamed. "Want a job kid? You're good at this."

I chuckled at the job offer.

The way they opened the valves one at a time probably created what are called air locks because the velocity of the water filling the line would never be faster than the entrained air bubbles that would form and collect at local maxima. That's the problem with gravity-fed lines. It's plumbing 101.

I had no idea how the mages tried to move the water through. Brute force hydraulic head pushing wouldn't work with an air lock because the air would never move from the local maxima where it was trapped. Physics would trump magic if someone did just brute force pushing on the water.

To get this to a satisfactory conclusion, I had to explain how air locks worked and how they could stop the flow in enclosed lines in gravity-fed water systems. Then I needed to lay out options on how to fix it, followed by a long-term plan to install air bleed valves at all the local peaks in the aqueduct line as it traveled across the countryside. That was quite a lot of things I needed to explain. It was times like this I cursed not being about to speak yet.

I smoothed over some wax since I had already filled it all.

"Emily," the Queen was standing in back of me tapping me on the shoulder. I didn't even notice that she had moved. "Emily, you look like you know what's wrong."

I nodded. I wrote: "There is reason to believe large air pockets in the system were introduced from fixing the break at the river. Air pockets can stop the flow. You can't get rid of them by pushing the water because the more buoyant air will stay in place regardless of the force applied to the water. Need to confirm air pockets. Get the air out the water will flow. Should probably ration water until the main line is fixed. Short-term fix: find air pockets and remove them. Also need a long term fix: install air bleed valves which will eliminate the need to hire contract mages in future."

The queen read it and handed it to the watermaster.

"Are you sure about this?" the watermaster asked me.

I wrote: "I don't think I'm wrong. Send someone to verify the air pockets. It's the only way to be sure."

The King walked up, picked up the tablet, and read it. "And what if you're wrong?"

I was sure I was right. A gravity-fed line across mountain terrain with no air bleeds? It was screamingly obvious.

"I believe I am right. I'm surprised this sort of no-flow condition has not happened before."

The watermaster read what I wrote after the King read it. "Little Emily, this has happened before. It's happened seven times since the line was built. If mages pushing the water didn't work, then the only other fix is to drain all the water from the line and then fill it back up. It takes a rotation."

"Holy Kamagishi, what do you think?" the king waved her over. "I need your opinion. Is your sense of precognition satisfied?"

Kamagishi joined the knot of people standing in front of me at the table. "My head is telling me that whatever was supposed to happen has happened. It happened when the watermaster said a little air was not a problem and Emily was shocked that he said that."

"So, who here knows how to cast the difficult and rare Schrodinger charm?" the King asked.

"What's that?" I wrote and handed it to the Queen. The name was really over the top? Schrodinger? Really? This sounded like goofball god humor of the Tiki variety.

"It's a charm that makes a hole in any object you cast it on until you actually look at it and then it disappears," the Queen said. "It's a strange and difficult charm."

"Nobody?" the King asked?

"Imstay, dear," the Queen said, smiling apologetically.

"Of course!" he threw his hands in the air, shaking his head. "Of course! Aylem! I forgot you know every charm ever created. Someone throw me out a window, please. We'll all be happier that way and I will finally get a rest." He pulled out a chair and sat down, looking very tired, "it's been a very long year this rotation."

(Continued in part 40)

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