Page 53 of The Dragon Queen

This.

It took longer to get back to Cheapside with us all walking, but I did so in the company of many women. Word had gotten around quickly of what I intended to do and quite a few ladies had decided to give making gyroscopes a go, but it wasn’t that which lightened my heart. It was the soft rifle of the breeze through my hair, the happy chatter as we got closer and closer, but most importantly, I felt like I was actually doing something. Draven might mobilise the city’s men to get our dragon eggs back, but I could perhaps do the same with the women.

“This feels good, Pip—” Maggie said, then slapped a hand over her mouth.

“Highness,” Nancy corrected with a sharp elbow to the other woman’s ribs. “Or is it Majesty?”

“It’s just Pippin. I’m fairly sure a war doesn’t care about rank or title, just who has the best weapons,” I replied. “We’ll make sure our men have them.”

“Do you have nose plugs to go with them?” another woman asked, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Cheapside is known for being… strongly perfumed.”

“Smells like a latrine well past being dug over, you mean,” Ged said, nodding her way. The ladies reacted in a flurry of smiles and blushes at his input, but he barely seemed to notice, marching on. “It’s worse at my da’s tannery. Brains rotting and piss, that’s what it stinks like.” He shot them a sidelong look. “Last chance to drop out, ladies.”

A few of the women paled, looking around and taking in the chaos of Cheapside before being forced to step sideways abruptly as a woman from the top floor of a sagging tenement dropped a bucket of stinking liquid out onto the street. To the women’s credit, none went scrambling back to the keep, not even when we marched into the tannery.

“Women?” Roland asked, shaking his head. “You brought me women?”

“You need to make gyroscopes rapidly and the work doesn’t require a man’s strength, but a woman’s nimble fingers and attention to detail,” I replied. “So, I found the one group that will not desert you to become soldiers.”

“I dunno.” Maggie put a hand on her hip as she surveyed the tannery. “Right now, a nice clean uniform and the king’s coin seems like a better idea than working here.”

“You think you can make weapons, girl?” Roland snapped.

“I reckon I can try.” Something dangerous glittered in her eyes. “I’ve got a man who’s a rider.” There were mutters at that as no rider was supposed to form long term relationships. The king had to rely on having their absolute loyalty. “I’d do anything to make sure he comes back safe, including making gyro thingies.”

“Jewellers,” Roland growled, fixing his son in his sights. “I asked for jewellers.”

“The gold smithing guild sends their regards.” Ged grinned at his father. “And you and me both know that they’ll take a gods damn age making just one gimbal, where we’ll have made hundreds in the same span of time. The girls have got little hands, clever ones, so how about putting them to work?”

“I’m not above making this a royal decree…” I said, oh-so casually.

Roland let out a long sigh, then turned back to the women.

“Alright, ladies, gather round, because I won’t be repeating myself…”

I clustered closer along with all the other ladies and watched him work.

Chapter 26

Apparently our contribution would involve cutting out many, many little cogs.

“Gods dammit!” I snapped as yet another fine saw blade snapped. I dropped the coping saw on the workbench and looked up at Ged. “I’m terrible at this. I can stitch all manner of flowers on the finest linen, play the pianoforte passably, and paint a portrait that looks somewhat like the subject, but cutting a bloody cog out of sheets of metal is apparently beyond me.”

“Tension.” Ged winked at me, carefully disengaging his saw blade from the metal he was cutting, then setting it aside. “Did you ever play a violin?”

“Mother hated the screeches I made, so I fear it wasn’t for long.”

“Think of the saw blade as being like the bow of the violin.” He held up his saw and pretended to play an imaginary instrument with it. “Too hard and you’ll be snapping horse hairs all over the place. Too soft and you won’t make a sound. Keep your wrist loose and let the blade do the work. You’re directing it, not forcing it through the metal.”

All good advice. So good that some of the women looked up to see what we were talking about. We’d all pulled up stools and startedcutting out cogs to Roland’s design, following the templates he sketched out onto the sheets of copper.

“At least that’s the way I was taught, Highness.”

Ged put especial emphasis on the last word, hoping to deflect the ladies’ interest, but he needn’t have bothered. Cloudy was about to do the job for him. We all turned around at the sound of shouts from the streets. Ged dropped his saw and reached for his sword, ready to defend my honour. He leapt to his feet and stood between me and the doorway.

But there was no Harlstonian enemy lurking outside of the tannery.

Cloudy landed with a thud, people scrambling to get out of his way as dust rouse in a massive cloud.

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