Chapter 9

Fire and Steel

Governor Adan studied the letter I'd obtained from Gareth Bryn with great care once more. Hard to say if it was because he doubted the letter despite its seals, or because he was slightly farsighted. The governor had sideburns which were as gray as most of his hair. What remained of it as it had receded from the top of his head.

It had only taken four days to reach Baerlon as I had gotten better at navigating in the air and there weren't any settlements on the northern route. We'd gotten rooms in the Dancing Dhurran's Inn as the best place to stay had burned down several months ago and was still being rebuilt. That could happen when several ta'veren came through your town.

I'd taken the time last night to get a better view of the local situation. The Whitecloaks I dimly remembered harassing people in Baerlon had moved away not long after the fire and people hoped that things were settling down now. There was some unease about the rumors of fighting on Almoth Plain but they figured that not many would try to cross the mountains to escape the violence.

More important to my own immediate interests, the processing of the metals coming out of the mines in the Mountains of Mist was a royal monopoly overseen by the governor directly. Multiple queens had expended whatever force and capital they had to ensure that Baerlon remained under their control and that Baerlon Ironworks was the only game in town.

I could still start this industrial revolution without royal permission, but it would be a lot more difficult and time consuming. However, just because I had that letter didn't mean everything was arranged. I still needed the cooperation of the man across from me if I wanted my steel project to get off the ground any time soon.

"So. Master Shen, is it?" The governor looked me up and down. For the occasion, I'd gone with something that was both more Andoran in style and more ostentatious in its decorations. There was silver running down the sleeves of my jacket and little golden buttons.

"Indeed. And yes, I am a foreigner."

"One wouldn't believe so if they only heard you speak," Heran Adan said. He placed the letter carefully on the desk. His chair scraped over the floor as he got up and the governor started pacing. "You appear to have the backing of the Crown as well. But that letter only requests that I offer what assistance is practical. And I'm not sure that your proposal is practical."

"You would be far more aware of local realities than they can possibly be all the way in Caemlyn so it only made sense that they rely on your judgment. As to my proposal, I believe that seeing is believing. I only require some space and the assistance of some of your less experienced ironworkers. Say, five workers. I will pay their salaries while they assist me as well as for all the materials I need. You've seen the note from Mistress Andscale so you know I have the credit. Truly, you risk very little."

The governor came to a halt. With his hands on his back he regarded me. "You, on the other hand, are risking a substantial amount of money. How do you know this will work?" He indicated the folder that contained my proposal. Some of the sketches had been laid out on the desk as he had studied them. He left unsaid how the Crown would feel if it turned out I had oversold what I could do.

"Because it has worked in the past in other lands. Indeed, this would be considered the old way of doing things there. Which is why it wasn't kept secret from me." All true, though I actually had used my divine power aided by memory to come up with this instead of a textbook or Wikipedia. "Some experimentation will be necessary to determine exactly what impurities are in the local iron. But I believe I should be able to present you a proof of concept in a couple of weeks." I could actually do that in a day but it would raise too many questions.

Returning to his chair, Governor Adan rearranged the papers in the folder with another squint. "Very well. You'll have your five men. We have a shed that shouldn't be in use right now, you can work from there. But I'll not lend you any more men than that nor any more time than a month. In the ten years I've governed Baerlon for Her Majesty I've never failed a quota, and this year will be no different."

I couldn't help but smile as I got up and gave the governor a short bow. "Thank you. And it won't take a month." Time to get to work, slowly.

VVVV

"So we finally figured out the timing today," I told Gemiad as I dug into dinner. "So now I just have to prove we can replicate it and start building the full-sized converter."

The dish served tonight was Brussels sprouts, though not called that in this world, along with a little bit of sauerkraut and bits of chicken dressed in a minty sauce. It all made for an interesting combination of tastes that wouldn't have been my first pick, but I'd had worse.

"It shouldn't be more than a couple of weeks more before we can move on. Well within the month." Gemiad didn't appear as happy about it as I had expected. We hadn't had much time to speak this week as we were both busy, but I'd think she'd welcome the news that we would soon be on our way. I said as much to her.

"No, I'm happy about that. The big story is happening on the other side of the mountains. With the snow melting in the high passes there's some news trickling in now. But I've actually been looking into something that happened here in Baerlon about three months ago."

"Oh?" I had a feeling what that something was.

She'd gathered some of the sauerkraut around a bit of chicken and popped it all in her mouth. Gemiad nodded and finished chewing before launching into her story. "You must have seen that inn they're rebuilding, the Stag and Lion?"

"Hard to miss."

"I know. And no other building got damaged. But nobody quite knows how the fire started." She kept a careful look on my expression as she spoke. "Some say the Whitecloaks did it, they'd been causing a lot of trouble, but some talk about an Aes Sedai. Apparently she fled the town on that same night, turned into a giant to step over the gate and headed west. In the company of some country folk. Strange company for an Aes Sedai." She kept a careful look on my expression as she spoke.

"If you want to know something, ask," I told her before taking a sip from my tea. The innkeeper had kept trying to serve me wine the first four days, but even in this new body I had little taste for alcohol. Or milk.

"You left Caemlyn with an Aes Sedai and ended up at the Eye of the World and talking to the Green Man. Was that the same Aes Sedai? You never mentioned anybody else with you, but I know something happened at the Queen's Blessing. That inn the Ogier stayed at. Apparently it got a visit from the Queen's Aes Sedai advisor right after you disappeared. She was looking for a country boy from the Two Rivers that had fallen into the palace garden. The Two Rivers is only a week south from here."

"It was the same Aes Sedai, yes." And I hadn't expected her to put so much together. She must have been digging into what I'd been doing after I left. "Excellent work and I wish I could tell you more, but some secrets aren't mine to share."

"But we're reporters," Gemiad objected. "You told us to dig and inform people. Something big is going on. It must have something to do with … The Last Battle. So how do a group from a backwater like the Two Rivers get mixed up with Aes Sedai and the bloody Last Battle?"

"Let's not talk too loudly about that where others might hear," I said. And she was getting awfully close now. If she stopped to wonder what role a young man might have in Tarmon Gai'don she could easily land on the right answer. And I had no idea how she would take that. The Dragon Reborn was the boogeyman of this world, in some ways even more so than the Dark One. All those False Dragons had not helped that poor reputation one bit.

"But as a reporter," I continued, "you also need to protect your sources. And while the Aes Sedai doesn't think of herself as that, I do. And I think she's doing necessary work, which she can't continue if I do publish it. So for now, I hold off and prepare for when we can." I couldn't help but smile. "You haven't seen all my notes."

"So that's it? I'm supposed to let it go until you think I'm ready?"

"Oh no, keep digging by all means. Build that narrative of what you think might have happened. But I do advise you not to publish for now and to check your assumptions."

Gemiad frowned. "My assumptions?"

"Yes. What you think is true might not actually be true. Common knowledge can be a pack of lies or half-truths. And it is possible we'll actually meet my Aes Sedai on this journey. You can make a judgment of your own then and getting a comment from one of the people you're writing about is just good journalism."

She leaned back in her chair and considered me. "So there is something more going on on Almoth Plain. And you won't tell me, but you're fine with me finding out on my own."

I raised my cup at her. "It's a good habit to acquire for a reporter."

"Then I'll keep digging, as you called it." She took a deep breath. "And I think I also found someone to be a "correspondent" for the Caemlyn Times."

I finished my meal as I listened to Gemiad, but my mind was elsewhere. The Seanchan might already be on the Head of Toman; hard to say. But were they responsible for all the fighting on Almoth Plain? It seemed wrong, I thought they had advanced slowly up the peninsula and along the coast. Was I forgetting something?

VVVV

I could feel the heat from where I was standing, so could some of the other notables who watched the full-sized Bessemer crucible going into operation for the first time. I didn't wear my jacket on the work floor, it would only get dirty in the process and between the spring sun and the heat of the furnace I worried more about sweating. Not that I was, even this heat was only pleasant. But others might wonder why I wasn't feeling the heat if I didn't take care.

"The secret to the process is two-fold," I told my audience. "First, we treat the coal to remove the impurities in it in a process similar to that of how you make charcoal. And for the same reason. With this "coke" we can produce enough heat to fully melt the iron ore inside the crucible."

I take a few steps to my left and point at a clock in a simple wooden case that one of my assistants has already started. "Now to turn the iron into steel it needs to be exposed to the air for a very precise amount of time. That's where the clock comes in. It's different for every kind of ore, again due to the impurities in the ore which can and do differ between mines. So replicating this process for mines elsewhere in Andor would require more experimentation. But we've now figured it out for iron coming out of this part of the Mountains of Mist and we should have four tons of steel within half an hour."

That figure got people talking among themselves but soon enough they peppered me with questions. Governor Adan was the only noble here, the others were a mix of merchants and craftsmen like smelters and blacksmiths; their questions reflected their priorities. Some were about the process, how it worked. Those weren't so easy to answer as these people didn't have a decent grasp of chemistry yet. Ironically, it was the merchants I could answer more easily. They wanted to know the costs of the process and yes, you did need a clock like this to time the exposure just right.

The questions died down as the crucible tilted so that the steel could be poured into ingots. We were nowhere ready yet to cast it in larger lots. We wouldn't be able to transport them anyway without railroads. At the moment, they actually transported the iron up north a ways to one of the tributaries of the Arinelle before then being shipped down to Whitebridge.

"I must admit, I had been skeptical," Governor Adan said as some of the blacksmiths inspected the ingot after quickly cooling it in oil. He eyed me, though. Especially my grimy hands and rolled-up shirtsleeves. "I hadn't expected you to get your own hands dirty."

"I'm a craftsman first. But you have some very good people here, so most of the time I only needed to explain what needed doing."

"And where did you come across this knowledge? I thought we had some of the finest ironworkers here but clearly not."

"You have some of the finest ironworkers this side of the Spine of the World," I said. "But I've traveled extensively and been to places you haven't even heard of." All technically true. "And speaking of travel, I'll be moving on soon so the people I trained will have to make the second converter on their own."

"You're leaving? Back to Caemlyn?"

I shook my head. "We're heading west, actually."

"You intend to cross the Mountains of Mist? But there's a war brewing in Arad Doman." The governor's eyes narrowed. "This is about that newspaper of yours. I thought I recognized your name."

"Ah, so an issue of the Caemlyn Times has reached Baerlon?"

The governor cast his eyes down and cleared his throat. "Well, I happen to have recently gotten a subscription. Expensive to have a courier bring the issues all the way here, but it's quite useful to be kept abreast of what is happening in Caemlyn. But you're going to report on the war between Arad Doman and Tarabon? I thought you only wrote about news from Caemlyn?"

"I take it you haven't received our issue about the battle at Tarwin's Gap then." I gestured to the west, the mountains were fast and stretched from north to south. "We're going to investigate what is happening. Right now, we don't know if it is a war."

"How do you mean?"

"While most of the rumors mention Almoth Plain, some mention Toman Head. And that would be a strange place for Tarabon and Arad Doman to butt heads. Which is half the reason we're heading there."

"I see." The governor rubbed his chin as he regarded me, then nodded. "Then I look forward to reading what you find. Though what should we do if we come across a problem with this new method of steel making?"

"I've left notes about most frequent problems they might encounter and I'll stop by on my way back as well. Though that might be a few months," I warned him. "But I'm not leaving tomorrow. I'll stay for a few days until my team has gotten more practice in and they can ask me any lingering questions."

"I believe I can see some of those questions coming your way already," he said as a gaggle of blacksmiths came towards us bearing not just the steel ingot but some of the slag as well.