(I could ask Valens to have him killed, or deported, or thrown in jail; I expect he'd do it, if I made up some story. It'd be the right thing to do, but he's so useful…
It doesn't matter, though. If he doesn't know what the work is-and how could he? — he can't damage it. In which case, whatever it is he wants, he can have; his business. But perhaps it would be wise to share these fears with the Duke, so that when Daurenja finally does turn savage, I can be rid of him without any blame rubbing off on me and the work. Perhaps; when the moment arises.)
He covered up the map with a sheet of paper, to stop himself staring at it.
A proper fire is always a good place to start. He'd requisitioned a disused drill-square behind the cavalry barracks, four hundred yards each side, flat and level, with sheds in one corner. The carpenters had already built a scaffold and plank lean-to in the middle, to shelter the fire-pit for the forge. They'd found him the biggest anvil in Civitas Vadanis; it had come out of a chain-maker's shop, and it had suffered a long, hard life, to judge by the scarred face and rounded edges. Haifa dozen smaller anvils were grouped round it, placed so that all of them had easy access to the fire. Simple oak trunks had to do for rollers, to slide the blooms to and from the anvils. The smiths, all there against their will, stood about in small groups, muttering and resentful, while the general laborers lifted and strained on ropes and levers, shifting carts full of baskets of charcoal, limestone, iron scrap. In the far corner of the improvised shed, the nail-makers were already busy, with their own forge, slack-tub, swages, wire plates and blocks. They were slightly happier, since at least they knew what they were supposed to be doing, and could get on with it straightaway. Ziani dismissed them from his mind.
The furnace was a compromise, forced on him by time and lack of materials. The previous day, the bricklayers had built a simple hollow tower, ten feet high and four feet square. In each face, about a foot off the ground, was a hole into which fitted the nozzle of a double-action bellows; above each of these was another hole, shrouded with sheet iron, to serve as an air intake. Through one side, at the very bottom, protruded a thick-walled clay pipe with a four-inch bore, stopped with a clay bung on a length of wire, draining onto a flat bed of sand. They'd lit a fire inside the tower before he arrived; it had caught nicely, fanned by slow, easy strokes of the four bellows, each blowing in turn. The laborers were tipping in bucketfuls of charcoal mixed with limestone rubble. When the tower was half full, Ziani gave the order and the men started loading the iron scrap, smashed up into lumps no bigger than a man's hand. There was only enough room in the prototype for about five hundredweight of iron-Daurenja had had trouble finding that much at a day's notice-before the topping of limestone chunks was tipped in, leaving the chamber about three-quarters full. Ziani told everyone apart from the bellows-workers to stand back, and gave the order to start blowing.
"How's the mortar?" he asked Daurenja, who was standing beside him (no need to look round to see if he was there). "It's only had twelve hours to stand, it must still be pretty soft."
"It's dried out quite well since they lit the fire," Daurenja reassured him. "It'll probably crack up when the furnace cools down, of course, but that's all right. This is just a trial run, after all."
"I hope you're right," Ziani muttered. "It's not going to look too good if the whole lot collapses in on itself when the Duke's watching." He looked round. "Shouldn't he be here by now? When did you tell him…?"
"I said noon," Daurenja replied. "It'll take till then before we're ready to pour. He won't want to be standing round with nothing to see, and if he misses it-well, he can still watch the bloom being hammered out. That ought to be spectacular enough, with all the sparks flying."
The bellows gasped, like a man in a seizure, and puffed, like a fat man running upstairs. Flames were starting to lick the top edge of the tower; still blue. When they turned yellow, the metal would be melted and ready to pour.
"I don't like the steam coming off the brickwork," Ziani said. "That's the damp mortar. The last thing we need is any moisture getting through to the melt, the whole thing could blow up."
"Unlikely," Daurenja said, and Ziani was pleased to allow himself to believe him. "The heat's going outwards, after all."
Ziani shrugged. He knew that, of course, but he wanted to have something to worry about. "How long do you reckon? Ten minutes?"
"With those bellows? About that."
They'd have better bellows for the real thing, of course. Ziani had already designed them: true double-actions, with valves on the Mezentine pattern, that blew on both the up and the down stroke. It was essential that the metal be brought up to heat as quickly as possible, to keep it clean. The melted limestone would flux out most of the garbage, of course, but he had no great faith in the quality of Vadani iron. He was saving the Mezentine scrap to sweeten the full-weight batches later on. There were boys on hand to keep the bellows-workers supplied with wet cloths to wrap round their faces and arms; without them, they'd be scorched raw in minutes.
(There's so much anger in heat, Ziani thought; you can contain it, or protect yourself against it if you're careful, but all the useful work is being done by anger, a furious resentment of all solid things, that'd reduce me to ash if I stood just a little too close to it; and a single drop of water on the hot brick or the molten iron would do more damage in a second than a hundred men with hammers in a year. The forces I have under my control are unimaginable. I've got to keep them that way; just me…)
The Duke had arrived, quietly, while Ziani was looking the other way. He looked tired, thinner and slighter than normal. (I thought he was taller and broader across the shoulders; and he's younger than he seems when you're talking to him. If he understood exactly what's going on inside that brick tower, would he be thinking the same as me?) Ziani went over and greeted him. The small knot of courtiers stepped back to let him through.
"How's it going?" Valens asked. "Any setbacks?"
Ziani shook his head. "This is everyday stuff," he said. "That square box there is stuffed with iron and fuel, a bit of sand to stop it chilling and some lime for flux. We've cooked up a good fire, which'll melt the iron; we'll know when it's ready because the flames change color; should be any minute now, I think. Then all we do is nip the plug out of that bit of pipe there, and the liquid iron'll run out onto the sand. It'll be a moment or so before it takes the cold enough to be moved, and then we roll it over those logs, grab it with big tongs, lift it up onto the anvil and start bashing it flat with big hammers. The trick'll be to work it down to the right thickness before all the heat goes out of it. In case we don't, and it's a fair bet we won't manage it all in one pass, we'll have to get it hot again on that forge over there. It's awkward because the blooms are heavy; we've got the rollers to make it a bit easier, but it's still a fair amount of heavy work." He realized he was chattering, and fell silent. Valens nodded, and said nothing. He seemed preoccupied, and he was too far away to feel the heat.