King and Emperor

all.”

“I do not think there is a pure-bred child of the Quraysh left to us,” replied his cousin.

“My pupil Mu'atiyah might have done,” ventured the philosopher. “He was of high birth, and easily guided by me, if by no other.”

“Too late,” replied the cavalryman. “We of the army of the Caliph-that-was accused him before the Cadi of bearing false witness. The fathers of many of those he sent to the impaling-poles brought their voices to the court. He was fortunate. Because he had been your pupil the Cadi adjudged him only to the leather carpet and the sword, not to the pole or the stoning-ground. He fought with the guards and died raging, without dignity.”

Bin-Firnas sighed, less at the young man's death than at the failure of what had been promised. “Who then?” he asked after a decent pause. “We cannot just pick one of the provincial governors, all the others would rebel immediately.”

Ishaq, Keeper of the Scrolls, drank from the cool water which was the greatest of refreshments in this, the tail-end of the scorching Spanish summer, and spoke into the thoughtful silence.

“It seems to me that there is no great need for a hasty decision. The Roman Emperor has turned away from our borders, having found his foolish relic of the Nazarenes, or so I hear. We do not need a single ruler. Why do we not send to Baghdad, and ask the descendant of Abdullah to send us a viceroy?”

“It would take forever!” said bin-Maymun. “Forever to send the message and longer for them to come to a decision. Nor would the governors accept whoever the Abbasid Caliph sent to us.”

“But during that time provisional arrangements might be put in place,” suggested Ishaq. “Rule by a Council. A Council of the Wise. Strictly temporary, of course. Still, during that temporary state institutions could be set up whose value would be so great that no later Caliph could overthrow them. A House of Surgeons. A House of Mathematics.”

“A Tower of Astronomers,” proposed bin-Firnas, “equipped with far-seers with larger and better lenses for study of the stars.”

“A new system of water-works, running down from the mountain springs to the coast,” put in bin-Maymun. “The landowners would pay for that—if they were certain that all would pay and all would share.”

“A library,” said Ishaq. “One which contained the works of the Greeks as well as of the hadith. Translated into Arabic for all to read. Or into Latin as well. If any doubted our aim, we could say that we wished to convert the Rumi to our faith with sound arguments as well as by the sword. And our cousins the Jews as well.”

“I have heard,” noted bin-Firnas, “that this business of the relic contains some terrible blow to the Christian faith. There is rumor of it among the traders from the north in the souk.”

Ishaq shrugged indifferently. “Such a faith hardly needs a blow. But let us agree that our faith shall be confirmed by reason. And that a Council of the Wise may be the way to do it.”

“We will speak to our friends in the morning,” agreed bin-Maymun. “Let Ghaniya the Berber follow Mu'atiyah the fool, and the matter can be arranged.”

The Way-fleet lay at anchor in the bay of Palma off the island of Mallorca, exactly where the Arab fleet had lain earlier the same year, before the Greek fire came to destroy it. Fishermen had already given a graphic account of what had happened then, and Shef had been concerned enough to order a standing kite to be raised, with Tolman and three or four of the others taking turns to spend an hour in the sky, not flying free—no-one had attempted that since the deaths of Ubba and Helmi—but strung out peacefully on their lines in the moderate breeze.

Shortly after Shef had tried his own flights, the Mediterranean had indeed proved that it could generate a storm, and the back-eddies of it were still with them. It had been a blessing in disguise, however, in that it had covered the approach of the Wayman fleet till they were almost at anchor. The raiding parties swarming eagerly ashore, led by Guthmund and full of experienced pirates, had immediately seized the Christian cathedral and found in it an accumulation of plunder. It had been first stored there by the Christian lords of the island, continued during the brief Islamic conquest, and stepped up to a higher power, it seemed, by the following conquest by the Emperor and his Greek allies, working in tandem. The troops left behind by the Emperor had fled into the interior. The Waymen, operating under strict orders of gentle conduct and supervised closely by their priests, reported that there was little chance of them acquiring allies from the natives, nominally Christian though they were. Solomon reported further that the booklets he carried in Occitan and in Latin were accepted readily, with great curiosity, by the Christian priests: the natives of the island, trapped in their own dialect of Mallorquin, had never seen a book that they could begin to read in their own language before, and the Occitan was close enough for them at least to try to make it out.

Solomon had not remained at hand, though, to watch the trials that Shef was now preparing. Thorvin too, intensely disapproving, had disappeared on his own errands, as had Hund and Hagbarth. For interpreting, Shef was now dependent on Skaldfinn. Farman too, the visionary priest, was prepared to observe.

The Greek fire apparatus had been unshipped bodily from the half-sunk galley, with immense care not to crack or bend any of its pipes, and had been carried carefully stowed in the hold of the Fafnisbane, a man watching it on Ordlaf's orders day and night to warn of any leak or scrap of fire. When it came to a trial, though, Ordlaf had mutinied. Shef had in the end taken a small Mallorcan fishing boat, stowed the apparatus in it, and taken it a decent quarter-mile out to sea. For hours he and Steffi had brooded over it, examining every part of it, theorizing about their apparent functions, reminding each other of what they knew for certain. They were now at least of one mind.

The big tank found separate from the rest was a fuel reserve, they agreed. Its connecting hose clearly matched the smaller copper dome: but the only function of that connection was to transfer fuel once the operating tank was emptied. In operation the pipe at the upper end of the dome was connected not to the reserve tank but to the apparatus actually found in place. Careful removal of this had persuaded them that it was a sort of bellows: a piston forced down a cylinder which, however, did nothing but force air into the operating tank. “It seems,” muttered Steffi, “that air has weight.” Remembering the strength of the wind under his kite, Shef nodded. The thought was ridiculous, for how could anyone weigh air? But the fact that one could not weigh it clearly did not mean that it had no weight—a thought for the future.

Another mystery was the valve attached to a short length of pipe on top of the dome. The pipe was plugged at the end but had an opening cut in one side. It made no sense.

What, then, was the function of the brazier and the conventional bellows below the dome? Obviously, to heat the fuel in the dome to operating temperature. But why? Neither Shef nor Steffi had any word to express the concept “volatile,” but they had seen water boil, had seen kettles boil dry. Shef, too, remembered the experiments of his former shipmate Udd with distilling a kind of winter ale. “Some things boil with less heat than water,” he explained to Steffi. “It may be that this stuff in the tank is one of them. What comes out of the nozzle when you turn the valve, then, is the lighter stuff, like the drink that Udd makes out of the steam from ale.”

“Isn't steam just water?” queried Steffi.

“Not if you heat ale or wine,” said Shef: “The stronger stuff comes off first, before the water. The opposite of winter wine. Water freezes first in the cold, boils last in the heat.” As he said the words he stiffened, the words of Loki coming back to him. What was it he had said, had offered him as a token? “It is best on a winter morning.” He did not understand, but it had something to do with this problem. He would remember it. If it worked… Then he would owe Loki something. Put into practice the plan he had considered. It would be a fair test, a fair return.

All their actions had been watched with tight-lipped scorn by the Greek siphonistos taken from the captured galley.

“We're going to try it,” said Shef to Skaldfinn. “All those who aren't necessary had better leave the boat.” The Greek turned immediately, reached for the painter of their dinghy.

“He understands our language a bit, then,” said Shef. “Ask him why he will not help us.”

“He says you are barbarians.”

“Tell him barbarians would lash him to the dome so that he would feel the fire first if anything went wrong. But we are not barbarians. He will see. He will stay with us, take the same chances that we do. The rest of you— over the side with you all, and lay off ten strokes. Now—” Shef turned back to Steffi and his three-man gang with a confidence he did not feel. “Light the match! Bellows-man, stand by and start when the flame is alight.”

“It's this pump that worries me,” muttered Steffi in an undertone. “I can see what it does, but I don't know