Maker of Fire

Lisaykos, at her private quarters

The enrollment ceremony and the elevation of Kayseo as both a full healer and as the heir to the holding of Pinisla went smoothly. What was notable was the dinner afterward followed by the events of the early morning.

In a rare show of courtesy, the King escorted me up the stairs to my living quarters where I would treat my family to a private dinner. "I thought Bobbo and his new daughter were joining us," Imstay counted the number of place settings at my dining room table. The servers were still adding the last touches to the table.

"Your spy service is failing you, Imstay King," I put my stole, headstall, and veil on my work table and joined him in my dining room. "Bobbo is taking his newly adopted daughter and her friends to have dinner with Captain Tyoep. They invited Emily but she declined, saying it was less embarrassing to fall asleep in the middle of dinner here than at the garrison."

Imstay had a good laugh over that. I was a bit wary over inviting him but the King is close to my son, regardless of what I may think of him, and Irhessa asked me to.

"So where is the bundle of trouble?" the King asked, referring to Emily.

"I'm right here, Uncle Imstay." Fedso'as had just entered the room, snuck up behind him and goosed him. Imstay turned to attack when I shut it down. "Children! That includes you, Imstay King, there will be no roughhousing in my quarters."

"Grandmom!" Fed pouted. Oyyuth had warned me that the King sometimes came to visit and played with the children.

"My home, my rules," I crossed my arms and glowered at the two of them. Fed looked put out. "Fedso'as, this is a working shrine. There are sick and injured people who need quiet. You'll have to get used to it."

"Even if these are private apartments?" Fed inquired, just like every conniving kid looking for a loophole to weasel through.

"Emily's bedroom is next to mine and there is no roughhousing allowed anywhere near Emily. Being around Emily has its own set of rules."

"What sort of rules, Great One?" Imstay asked, now curious.

"No roughhousing, no sudden movements, no touching her if you can help it, and no picking her up without asking or warning her," I explained. "Also keep your hands away from her face and avoid carrying weapons openly. The last two can trigger nightmares and spells of her being difficult to handle."

"Seriously?" Imstay looked incredulous.

"Sometime in the past, the Blessed Emily was subjected to violence at the hands of some ruffians who captured her. This resulted in horrible scarring on her backside." I left out that his mother's family ran the illegal breeding farm where Emily got all those scars.

"Scarring?" asked my son who had just walked in with his son, the eight-year-old Troyeepay, Oyyuth, and Katsa.

"Her backside including her legs, arms and skull were carpeted with whip scars. We removed them when she first arrived."

Imstay looked troubled. "Whipping? The charm of control is supposed to make such measures unnecessary."

"Feel free to check the records downstairs, Imstay King, which I had witnessed because I was worried over a potential treaty violation with Inkalim. I thought she might be from there when she first arrived here because she had no embedded charm of control."

"Gods!" He looked shocked. "Are you sure it was abuse by Cosm and not by fellow Coyn?"

"I've seen her memories. They were Foskan Cosm."

"That's disturbing." He frowned in thought.

The change in Imstay was incredible to me. He was still the blunt and loud man he had always been but lately, he had become thoughtful and questioning. He appeared to be listening to everyone and judging what he heard slowly and objectively. It was a remarkable change. I wasn't sure if it was due to the execution of his uncles and their families, or the arrival of Emily, or both, but he was turning into someone different while we watched.

"Where's Emily?" my granddaughter asked.

"You need to remember to use her title, young one," I chided her.

"But Emily told me not too," Fed persisted.

"Not when you are in the company of someone like the Lord Gunndit or the King," I corrected her. "Always use the more polite form of address when in doubt. You should be using the King's title too, but since you already have a relationship with him and we are in a private setting, I let it pass for now."

"Now you sound like my dad," Fed pouted.

"I'm far worse than your father," I assured her. Fed rolled her eyes. My son laughed.

"So where is Blessed Emily?" Fed asked again.

"She's probably in her bedroom getting changed. I'll go check." I entered my bedroom and knocked on her bedroom door.

"Emily?" I knocked again and thought I heard a soft reply. I peeked clairvoyantly and saw her struggling to get out of the fancy black kirtle she wore at the ceremony because she couldn't reach the back laces. I let myself in. "Let me get those laces for you, Emily," I got down on one knee. "Put your arms straight up." It only took a moment to get the laces undone.

"Thank y...you," a subdued Emily said.

"Ask for help, next time, dear heart, or we'll start calling you Stubborn One instead of Blessed One."

"That's not a bad idea," she considered it. "I like it."

"Try not to dress too informally, dear," I advised. "We made the children dress and it would be nice if you were not too bad an example in front of them."

She gave me a disgusted look, "be so kind as to hand me the change of clothes I already laid out on my bed, please." I bit my lip to keep from laughing as I handed her the white kirtle and made my escape back to the dining room.

"Speaking of the Blessed Emily, Mother, what really happened with her and the Queen?" my daughter asked as I took my seat at the table. "There are a hundred different rumors out there."

"What have you heard through the Sassoo post?" I asked since the Shrine of Sassoo was the authoritative voice of the convocation.

"I've heard what everyone else has heard: that the Queen caused an accident with magic that almost killed the Blessed Emily, and that Mugash appeared and punished the Queen. Then the Queen was so distraught over what she had done that she fled in despair and can't be found. Because a god intervened on Emily's behalf, there are some people who say she may be a prophet or a saint in the making." She took the coronet off her head and put it on the table with a look of disgust, "I hate that thing---it's so heavy it gives me a headache."

"Your father used to say the same thing about that coronet," I recalled. "Well, the official story is very close to what happened. Regarding Emily, I live with her at the moment, and trust me, I doubt she's a saint." I heard Emily's soft soprano out in the hallway as she spoke with someone on the serving staff. "Let's wait and hold this discussion until Emily goes to bed, which should be early tonight."

Dinner was quite good. We had lamb with mint jelly because I knew that both the king and my son would like it. Then we had an Emily recipe that she called ice cream. She got all excited about it one day when she discovered some of the kitchen staff could use charms of cold on food. Wolkayrs took her to visit the bronzeworker next door to the woodshop his family ran. A rotation later, Wolkayrs delivered a wood and bronze contraption she called an ice cream maker. The woodshop and the bronze works now have a partnership, making ice cream makers for nobles and affluent merchants. I made sure Emily got a percentage.

Ice cream used an exorbitant amount of precious sugar, which is an import, but what came out afterward made the kitchen of my shrine even more famous for its food. Imstay threatened to steal my cooks. He could do that if he really wanted to so I allowed him to send some of his cooks here to train at the beginning of the cold season.

It was Katsa's first time with ice cream, which she enjoyed but she sighed over the cost of sugar. Emily asked why and Katsa explained that sugar was made far to the south in the land of the Chem. It was only available as an import through the Sea Coyn. Then Emily asked why we didn't extract sugar from the large beets grown as hog feed instead.

The table went silent. The look on the King's face was precious. The look on Katsa's face was even better. My son had this insufferable 'I told you so' look on his face aimed at his sister.

"Excuse me," I got up and got Wolkayrs' running log of Emily utterances from his work table in the study next door. I sat down again, "start from the beginning, Emily."

"What are you doing, Great One?" Imstay interrupted.

"We have an ongoing record of the things that Emily says," I explained as if it was the most normal thing in the world, which for us, it was. Almost a year of Emily underfoot does that to a person. "Just give me a quick outline, Emily, and then we can get back to socializing." She summarized her thoughts on beets as: grow beets, wash beets, mush beets, steep beets, separate beet mush from liquid, evaporate fluid, collect crystals of sugar. She had a lot of different caveats that I left out because I didn't understand them. Besides, the point was just to keep track of her ideas and we could expand upon them later, just like we had with paper, pencils, and plumbing.

When I was done with recording the idea, the King looked at the two of us in amazement. "Does this happen all the time?"

"About once a rotation," I said. I wanted Imstay to see Emily in the process of being inventive. If he accepted Emily as a Coyn who created things, then it would be easier for him to accept other Coyn as creative agents.

"What happens after you write things down?" he asked me.

"Some of them we can use right away, like medicines or new recipes in the kitchen, some we save to consult with another shrine, and some must wait until other projects are complete," I explained.

"What sorts of things need to wait?" Katsa asked, equally as fascinated as Imstay.

"The camera, for example," Emily explained slowly, "can not be made w...without glass and iodine and bromine."

"What's a camera?" Katsa had never heard of anything called a camera.

"It's the box that makes exact images I told you about," Irhessa told his sister. "It's why I need to take a trip to the coast for seaweed to make iodine and bromine."

"What are iodine and bromine?" Imstay asked.

"Substances that combine w...with silver to make an image without magic," Emily explained.

"How is that possible without magic?" the King asked, looking at Emily thoughtfully and shaking his head. "It's almost too much to absorb at once. Ice cream. Sugar from beets. Boxes that capture images on silver. I feel like my head will burst."

"Emily has that effect on people," I remarked, enjoying the sight of other people besides me getting run over by Emily's wild ideas.

"Oh, Emily?" Fed leaned in her chair and made big eyes at Emily.

"Yes?"

"What did I just say about titles, child?" I scolded my granddaughter.

"Yes, Grandmom," she pouted just a little. She looked at Emily, "Great One?"

Emily gave me a pained look before turning back to Fed. "Yes, Fed?"

"Now that I'll be staying here at the shrine, when I get some free time, will you still take me to fly kites?"

"If y...you can give me a day of w..warning, I can," Emily replied. "I'll keep my promise to you, but you'll need to do most of the w...work because I can't right now."

"Oh wow, thank you, Emily...Great One," Fed bounced in her chair. The girl had entirely too much energy.

"Emily," I picked the stylus back up, "what is kite flying, and is it a dangerous activity for my grandchildren?" I deliberately smiled.

Emily shook her head. Then she grinned. "A kite is a toy made of paper or cloth on a light frame of w..wood, attached to a string, and flown in a breeze."

"But you don't have any magic to make something fly," Imstay protested.

"I don't need magic," Emily replied, "just some breeze and some good aerodynamics."

"Arrow what?" Imstay sputtered.

Emily looked at the King, grimaced, and dropped her head onto her hand sighing.

"You did it again, dear heart," I leaned over and told her. She nodded, head still held in her hand.

"If you'll excuse me for a moment," Katsa got up and headed for the necessary, having been in my quarters many times.

"So," I asked Emily, "can you explain this arrow die macks thing to me?"

"It's as basic as oxygen," she gave me an apologetic look.

"That's not encouraging," I remarked, given how difficult it was for me to understand the theory of gasses, which Emily was teaching me. Emily considered knowledge like that to be basic. I didn't want to think about what she considered difficult or advanced.

Katsa came rushing back into the dining room, "Mother, what happened to your necessary? It's...It's..." She paused and frowned in confusion, "I don't know what it is!"

"Oh my," it was an oversight on my part, "I forgot to warn you."

"PFfffffft!" Emily tried not to laugh and didn't succeed. She started laughing in earnest. The mirth was contagious because I started to laugh too. The look on my daughter's face was just too funny: my super-competent overachieving daughter was at a total loss and completely flummoxed. I needed a good laugh just then.

"Wait," Imstay leaned forward, "did you...?" He got out of his chair and ran past Katsa to the bathroom, leaving my bedroom door open in his wake. There was the sound of water gushing through the pipes, followed by a funny anemic water sound, then a clunk, followed by another clunk.

"Hey, it's not working now," Imstay shouted from the bathroom in protest.

I shouted back, "you have to wait for the tank to fill back up."

"You built one?" my son leaned forward as realization spread across his face. "A working flush necessary? I have to see this!" He got up and ran past his sister to the bathroom. There was another flushing sound.

"Emily, Great One, I want one!" the king shouted. "What do I need to do to get one?"

Emily was too busy turning red from laughing too hard.

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