The Depths of Neptune - Chapter 11

Emain Macha, Ériu

“How could you let her live,” Conchobar bellowed, looking from his elevated throne at Llassar.

“Because having her killed would have meant generations of her people trying to undermine the rule of you and your son. The Empire can’t afford to keep legions here indefinitely, and we need as many of your men as possible to join us in taking the fight to the Carthaginians. That only works if we’ve successfully pacified this island, which again, won’t happen if their queen is dead and her killers are ruling over them,” Llassar said.

“It also won’t happen with her free to try to overthrow me or sitting in my dungeon, which is the same as if she were dead in the eyes of a peasant. At least dead, she couldn’t make things worse. If she were to get free, it would be even worse. She’d be out there and would have successfully made us look weak, which would help her convince more people to join her cause.”

“Which is why I have another idea. You’re going to hate it and probably threaten to throw me in the dungeon with her, but hear me out. I think this will work.”

“I promise nothing,” Conchobar said, but waved for him to continue.

“She should marry your son.”

“What?! Have you lost your mind? That woman hates me, took in Fergus, joined the Carthaginians, and had dozens of my villages burned and hundreds of my people killed. Now you think I should make her the mother of my son’s heirs? You’re right; I should have you thrown in the dungeons with her.”

“I know it seems extreme, but it solves all of your problems neatly. Yes, she hates you. And yes, she tried to overthrow your rule, but she knows she’s beaten. She and Fergus had no children and she has no heirs. She knows she’ll never rule in her own right again. A chance for her children to eventually rule will go a long way to easing her hate, and it’s not like she would be their only parent.”

“So my son would have to remain home like a woman, raising children instead of out earning glory and honor for our house? If not, then she will have much more influence over them and children killing their parents in order to rule is not unheard of, nor unusual. What you’re saying is you want to set my son up to be murdered by my grandchildren.”

“That might be a possible outcome if they stayed here, but there are ways around that. You are still young and have many years of rule left in you, and your son will have years of rule in him once you are gone. It will be decades before your grandchild will be in a place to rule. I can speak from firsthand experience that, over time, hate can fade. To ensure that, she and your son shouldn’t stay here. Send your son to join the legions, working under the Consul. Cormac still needs a lot of seasoning, and the war is changing. He will be in place to watch it change firsthand. When the war is over, he will no longer be a young whelp, wet under the nose. He’ll be a seasoned soldier, ready to lead. To understand the ways of war, there is no better man I can think of for him to learn from than the Consul. Hopefully, it will take some of the fire out of his belly and replace it with more brains in his head.”

“I can hear you,” Cormac said. “And don’t I get a say in who I want to marry?”

“No,” both Conchobar and Llassar said, simultaneously.

“Like I said, wet under the nose,” Llassar said.

“You’ve been raised on too many tales from the lore masters, who’ve filled your head with nonsense. You have many responsibilities and who you marry is important.”

“You married the woman you loved,” Cormac shot back.

“I wasn’t King at the time, and it didn’t seem likely I would be. And look what happened to your mother.”

Llassar had heard conflicting stories about the death of Cormac’s mother. To hear the men at court tell it, she had died of a wasting disease that spread across the country while Cormac was a child. Cormac and his father both believed that she died from a curse Fergus paid a witch to put on her. Llassar was as wary of witches as any other man, but having heard Conchobar tell the story, it seemed a little too practiced. He’d always found the king to be a little too calculating, and this was just the sort of thing he would use to help solidify his rule.

“She’s a beautiful woman and, in spite of whom she chose to ally herself with, a capable leader. Her kingdom, of all the kingdoms on this island, has been your biggest threat since she took the throne. She’s smart and clever, traits that would be good to pass down to your grandchildren.”

“Also traits that would lead her to try to overthrow my house.”

“True, which is why I don’t think she should remain on this island. This option actually eliminates many of the problems created by her very existence. In marrying your son, she is elevated to a place of honor, which will take a lot of fire out of the bellies of her followers. But, she also won’t be here to cause problems and she’ll be under the eye of thousands of legionnaires and a man sent by the gods, which is a pretty good way to keep her in line. She will, in effect, be a hostage; but in a way that no one who supports her can complain about. She should remain in the Britannian capitol and off this island for several years and any children should be brought back here, to be raised under your guidance and free from her influence. By the time you step down and your son becomes King, hopefully they will be old enough that your guidance will have sunk in, shielding them from their mother's influence.”

“This is insane,” Cormac said. “You can’t agree to this.”

“Can’t I?” Conchobar said, his head turning from Llassar to his son. “Llassar makes excellent points. This might actually work in our favor. Once your children are born, it will help cement her people to our kingdom. The people of the other kingdoms that stood up to the Carthaginians were left leaderless. They’re predisposed to support us over anyone who might have had a hand in the destruction of their homelands. With Medb’s people placated, that gives us support from a majority of our new subjects. Better, her kingdom was the second largest next to our own before the Carthaginians arrived. With your union, your children’s claim to leadership will be much better than either mine or yours, which strengthens our family and ensures we endure. I have to hand it to you, Llassar, this idea is very clever.”

Llassar only dipped his head in acceptance of the compliment.

“We are, of course, not our own people any longer. Do you have any idea what our new Emperor or this Consul of yours will think of the union? Have you run this idea past them?”

“No, although strictly by the rules of the Empire, you are free to govern your kingdom as you see fit, as long as you follow the guidelines passed by the Imperial Senate. As far as I am aware, nothing they have passed would affect internal politics, political marriages, or the like.”

“Good, then at least they haven’t screwed that up. While we’re on the subject, I am not overly pleased with the laws they are passing. I assume you heard about the compromise they worked out over our fishermen killed by your people?”

“I did.”

“And what are your thoughts on that?”

“I don’t have any thoughts. My people and your people each have an equal say, and I can tell you that my people aren’t going to be overly pleased with this compromise either. From the maps I’ve seen, it gives your fishermen the prime waters. I’d think this would be a victory for you.”

“A victory would be someone being held accountable for our dead subjects.”

“I have found that when people start declaring blood price as victory, it often turns into an endless loop of revenge killings after revenge killings until people start hating each other on principle and forget why they were ever actually angry in the first place. Better to leave everyone with a poor taste in their mouths and end the cycle.”

“Nothing sets your blood on fire, does it you old goat.”

“Blood spills a lot faster the hotter it gets, I’ve noticed. Better to leave it cold.”

***

Factorium

“I wish she would say why she wanted me to dissolve copper into the sulfuric acid,” Sorantius said, looking at the pages he was just delivered.

The messenger, one of Lucilla’s Caledonian guards, just shrugged. Sorantius didn’t consider himself particularly bigoted or prejudiced against the northerners. In fact, he had many Caledonians working in his new chemical factories, two of whom were supervisors overseeing the day-to-day work during their shifts. This one, however, he found particularly grating every time he showed up with something new from his mistress. The short, broad-shouldered man, who Sorantius was pretty sure was named Cywing or Cryrig or something like that, had a habit of just staring at him, hovering around while waiting to get the pages back.

He also found these new rules about the instructions infuriating. He understood the security concerns, but he hadn’t had anything stolen and didn’t see why he should be punished because Hortensius was absent-minded. The tasks he was performing weren’t like melting iron or banging out swords on an anvil. Even with the notes and the detailed explanations on these pages, this was incredibly delicate work using very dangerous chemicals that he still only half understood. The smallest error could cause volatile reactions, and he was having to either travel halfway across the complex of factories to the small document storage building that had just been finished or rely on his memory, giving him the choice between taking additional risks or slowing the process down.

He’d already asked that they be provided extra guards who could deliver the documents and wait with them as needed, or at least a guard for his enclosed office allowing him to keep what documents he needed there during the day, and have the guard return them that evening to the storage building. It seemed like a good solution to Sorantius, but so far, no one else agreed. So he was forced to stand here, attempting to memorize instructions and measurements while this man stared at him, as if he wanted Sorantius to make a mistake.

The philosopher was about to give his latest complaint to the man, even though he knew it would fall on deaf ears, when there was a loud boom from inside the factory. Turning, he saw one, then four, and then a dozen men come running out of the building, all coughing and covering their faces. Several men stopped to retch into the dirt once outside and another collapsed mid-run, smashing into the ground. Some were tearing their clothes off and Sorantius could see holes in them and festering wounds on the workers as their skin was exposed.

Shoving the papers at the brute, he said, “Go get your mistress and any guardsmen you can find.”

Thankfully, the man didn’t argue, grabbing the pages and sprinting off.

“You,” he shouted to one of the people running up to see what the sound was. “Get water and soap. Grab as many men as you can. Help scrub down the wounds of anyone with burns, but do not touch the area. Use long brushes. Get them out of those clothes.”

He’d spent long hours going over the Consul’s notes, and one of the pages had been directions on what to do if some of the acids spilled on a worker. There were more detailed instructions for the medics on how to treat the wounds, but the part he’d committed to memory was how to deal with it immediately, and every note had been clear. Get the acid off their skin as quickly as possible.

Several men went to grab buckets of water while Sorantius ran towards the building to see what was happening and what he could do for his people.

“No,” one of the workers said, grabbing him before he could go inside. “It’s dangerous.”

“Is anyone else inside?” Sorantius asked.

He already knew their answer. There had been maybe a hundred people in the factory at the moment the explosion occurred, and he’d seen less than two dozen come out. There were several rear entrances, and surely some had left that way, but knowing the layout, there should have been more on this side, since the rear of the building was used more for storage while the working areas were closer to the front, allowing a clear separation from some of the more volatile mixtures in areas that had open flames.

“Some,” the man said, choking. “I saw men on the ground, but … it was so hard to breathe.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Everything seemed normal; when all of a sudden the third vat for preparing the sulfur, the one we just put into production, exploded. The acid spilled out, splashing all over. There was this green smoke the color of moldy fruit. It filled the room so fast. So fast … There wasn’t anything …” he said, and then stopped to cough so hard Sorantius thought he might pass out for a moment. Thankfully, he managed to get his breath back to continue. “I don’t know what happened. No one was even near the vat. I was looking right at it. It all seemed normal. It wasn’t until we smelled it that we realized something was wrong.”

His eyes were bloodshot and red, his face was flushed, and the man was taking ragged breaths. Sorantius could hear his chest rattle with each inhale.

“You,” Sorantius yelled at the closest apparently healthy man he could see. “Send for the physicians. And have someone find the Consul or Lucilla. We’re going to need help.”

***

Lucilla looked over the scene in the dying light and was appalled. The injured had all been moved, some to clean facilities here in Factorium, but most by carriage back to Devnum, where they could be taken to the hospital. Not much different than the valetudinaria Lucilla had been familiar with, Ky had widened their purpose to be for all Romans and not just veterans, giving the people of the city a centralized place to go for medical care, instead of requiring physicians to visit the home of each sick person, or a sick person being taken to the physician’s home.

There had been some pushback from the physicians initially, since it meant they were all operating out of the same place, which meant competition for their patients, and more importantly their patients’ money. In the end, Ky had worked out a compromise with them to make sure no one lost any money. Of course, since Ky was still giving them new ways of treating people, which meant more patients they could actually help, they couldn’t very well say no. It meant more expense for the Empire, but at least this time that expense was offset by what the physicians had to pay back for using the new tools and medicines Ky was introducing.

Most importantly, it had worked. The physicians were actually making more money, because patients were coming to them instead of the physician needing to travel from house to house, and people were able to get medical help faster. Everyone was benefiting. Or at least, everyone in Devnum.

Seeing the piles of burned clothing, the ground still wet with sickness and blood, it was clear they’d have to do more. She’d already considered the need to put something similar in other towns, but she hadn’t thought of the complex of factories as a town, so she hadn’t considered the need to have one here. In hindsight, that was foolish. The number of people who worked here, how dangerous their work could be, and how very far they were from Devnum meant they needed physicians here permanently all the more. She didn’t doubt that some of the men sent to Devnum for treatment would die on the way if the description of their condition was at all accurate.

“My lady, thank the gods you’re here. They said the air had a green fog that fell to the floor and burned anyone it touched. Men were coughing up blood … it was terrible. I don’t know what to do. I can’t send my men in there to check if the gas is gone and short of having them arrested by the praetorians, they won’t let me go in.”

“It’s alright,” Lucilla said. “What did you do for the injured men? How were they when they left for the hospital?”

“I followed the Consul’s instructions. Their clothes were removed and the burned areas were cleaned with water and soap. He didn’t say what to do about coughing up blood, though. I … I didn’t know what to do.”

“For most chemical burns, that would be the correct treatment, although it is impossible to be positive without analyzing the chemicals released inside the building.”

“You did the right thing,” Lucilla said. “Just get all your men back from the building.”

“You can’t …”

“I won’t go in. I just need to walk around the perimeter and try to see if I can tell what happened.”

Sorantius looked doubtful but obeyed. She knew that, even though she’d been the one giving him most of his instructions, he’d assumed they’d come from Ky. She didn’t fault him for it; that was just how people were. She’d dealt with it her entire adult life in politics, and she was the Emperor’s daughter, which meant that she was given more leeway than most other women. It hadn’t been a surprise to her that healers and philosophers would have the same prejudices.

“We can find out what’s happening, right?” she asked softly as she approached the doorway, out of earshot of the workers Sorantius ushered away from the building.

“Most likely,” Sophus said. “When it is clear, send the drone into the building. I will run an analysis of the air and equipment to determine the cause of the toxin.”

She reached into the pouch she secretly carried and pulled out the small plate size object, looking over her shoulder to see if anyone could see what she was doing before holding her hand out flat, the drone resting in her palm. Instantly, it leaped from her hand, light as a hummingbird and darted inside.

Once it was out of sight, she started walking around the circumference of the building, making sure to look at the ground, the walls, and anything else she could think of to make it look like she was doing some type of investigation. Hopefully, she’d have answers soon, and she wanted to have a plausible explanation for how she came up with them.

She’d almost made it to the rear door of the building when Sophus finally spoke.

“The gas seems to have dissipated, most likely through a cross breeze created by the open windows, rear door, and main door.”

“Do you know what it was?” she asked.

She knew the word only because Ky had described it to her, and she’d had to write a description of it in one of her informational sheets for Sorantius. It was still a little hard for her to wrap her mind around small parts of matter that you can’t see, that makeup the smells and even the air she breathed. She knew about steam and smoke, but she had always thought of those as just existing, and not being comprised of smaller parts she couldn’t see. The idea that everything was made up of smaller things was something that had been thought of since the Greeks, but the scale still boggled the mind when she thought of what Ky had tried to teach her.

“I believe so. One of the vats was torn open from what looks like out-gassing. I have detected residues of hydrochloric acid and chlorine in the higher areas along with several other substances. Although I cannot be positive without more data, the highest probable extrapolation from available data suggests that these vats have been used to create multiple chemicals without being properly cleaned between uses, creating a form of chlorine gas.”

“How in the hell did they make chlorine gas?” Ky, who had apparently been listening to their conversation, said, breaking in.

“You recently gave Sorantius the formula to create a crude form of sodium hypochlorite for disinfecting and cleaning of medical areas. It is plausible that, hearing it was used for cleaning, it was used to clean a vat that was then used for hydrochloric acid. There are other traces present, however, that would have changed that reaction, which could explain the explosive nature, since chlorine gas on its own would not create the pressure levels necessary to rupture the tank.”

“My instructions specifically warned against putting the bleach in contact with any acids. I even included vinegar in the list of things to not put it in contact with.”

“It appears they did not listen to that warning, Commander.”

“Damn. What about the wounded?”

“Sorantius followed your instructions. The wounds were cleaned with water and soap before the injured left for Devnum.”

“At least he did something right,” Ky said.

“I know this is bad, but the situation here has been difficult. We have him working on at least a dozen projects, all involving precise and complicated mixtures that he has to travel halfway across the complex to confirm.”

“Commander, these types of accidents were common during the industrial revolution and we are introducing advancements from over a hundred-year range in just a few months. Errors such as these are a statistical certainty.”

“That doesn’t help the injured parties,” Ky said.

“No, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not like we’re going to be able to get rid of Sorantius and find someone else to take his place. We’d be starting over and this is the first accident like this. It’s no different than when Hortensius blew up the gunpowder building.”

“Maybe not. We need to make it clear to him what caused this and make sure it doesn’t happen again. We also need to rethink the use of bleach.”

“Although an irritant, it is safer than the phenols originally suggested as an antiseptic cleaner due to its possible toxicity and corroding nature on the less protected steel currently in use.”

“We still need to think of other options if they’re going to be creating chlorine gas.”

“What do I do about the factory here and now?” Lucilla asked.

“Give it five more hours and the building should be clear of the gas, although perhaps it’s better to shut it down for a few days. It should be safe, but they still need to clean every surface with soap and water once they get back inside. And make sure he knows how this happened and what to do to keep it from happening again.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Lucilla said.