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Red

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The tip of the pen scratched over the surface of the paper furiously. It had taken Bravye the rest of the morning, and well into the afternoon, to feel as though she could respond to the news Kern had brought. Once that had happened, however, she had dove in with purpose. It had taken a little time to properly hit her stride, but once that had happened she had begun compiling a new stack of sheets at a blistering pace.

She heard the door open and glanced up to see Snosote enter with a tray. The maid carefully cleared a spot on the desk and set the tray down. Bravye could see steam coming off a bowl and a goblet with a rich, red liquid in it.

“Soup?”

“Goose and turnip, with a little kick of horseradish to liven it up, Great Lady.” Snosote set the bowl before Bravye, then set a spoon and napkin alongside of it. “It’s a favorite among my former clan. We’ve also spiced the wine and mulled it for you.”

“I’m not hungry,” Bravye demured, eyeing the papers scattered across the desk.

“Soup is good when you are feeling unwell. Besides, Isoli would have my skin tanned and hung on the wall as a warning to others if I defied her order to feed you.”

Sighing, Bravye wiped the ink from the tip of the pen and set it down. She closed up the bottle of ink, then turned towards the bowl of soup. “Sometimes I wonder who is truly the mistress of this place.”

“It is clear, Great Lady. Isoli is.”

Bravye snorted and sipped at a spoonful of soup. The first taste was enough to set her nose to watering slightly as the horseradish and turnip did its work on her sinuses. She started to set the spoon back down, but noticed Snosote eyeing her like a hawk. After a moment of hesitation she scooped up another mouthful of soup.

Snosote gave the slightest of nods, then turned to the stove. Opening it, she carefully poked the coals inside with a steel rod before adding another lump of coal and closing the door. Satisfied, she returned to watching over Bravye.

“You’re hovering,” Bravye said between bites.

Snosote didn’t respond. Instead she looked at the papers and books laying on the desk. “May I ask what all this is?”

“Evidence.”

“Lady?”

Bravye took a sip of the spiced wine, enjoying the way it cooled the edge of the horseradish while still spreading warmth through her body. She hadn’t realized she was as hungry, or as cold, as she had become. A sense of gratitude towards her overbearing head maid seeped into her consciousness.

“Evidence for the moot. They contend that my actions have harmed the war effort, and that my brother is complicit in this act of sabotage.”

Snosote nodded, but then shot a meaningful look at the soup. Bravye quickly took another spoonful, swallowing it hastily, before continuing.

“If I can show that, contrary to hindering the war effort, I have been able to contribute, then perhaps they will allow things to continue as they are.”

The maid looked doubtful.

“Well, at the very least it will let Kern off the hook,” Bravye muttered. She picked up the bowl and drank directly from it to hide her scowl. “At that point it will simply become a matter of my defying centuries of law and tradition in defiance of my sex.”

“Finish your food, great lady.”

Sighing, Bravye returned to scooping food into her mouth.

She quite understood Snosote’s poorly concealed doubts. This wasn’t truly about the war, and about her ability to keep the foundry contributing. It was about her. About her want, no, her need to keep hold of the only thing left of her husband. So long as she continued to work on keeping the foundry functioning at its peak it was like she was still working with him, still had something to touch, to love.

Without that she had nothing but empty days and lonely nights. The lot of the widow was clear. A widow was to mourn for her lost husband, a living testament to his care, until the day she died. She wasn’t to permitted to have more than one husband in her life as the vile elves did. The burdens of business or finance was something she was to be protected from by her surviving family.

That might have been fine and well for an old woman with only a few years of life left to her. The cares of the world likely leave her wishing for nothing more than a chance to rest while being doted on and cared for by her grand children, regaling them with tales of their father and grandfather and helping their mother to care for them..

Bravye was not quite forty yet. With a little luck she had a good century of life left in her. With no children, let alone grandchildren, she had no one to watch over, no one to tell stories to. Her husband had left her no legacy to watch over and to tend to as a way to honor his memory. Nothing, that is, except the foundry.

Giving that up…

A century is far too long to live without any meaning or purpose. It would drive anyone mad.

Or to drink?

Trying to stave off the thoughts that were her only company during the dark winter nights, Bravye seized the cup of wine and drained it. The warmth of it was cold comfort, but it was all she had to work with.

That, and the books.

Shoving the empty soup bowl aside she picked up her pen once more and returned to the ledger she had been going over. Ignoring Snosote as the maid cleared away the dishes and left, closing the door to keep the heat in, she began reviewing her findings.

Hers was one of the largest foundries in the world, producing four hundred and eighty tons of steel a day. That was enough steel to make nearly two miles of dragon road, or five hundred cannon barrels capable of firing a round the size of a dwarf’s head. Twenty five dragon wagons a day could be made with her steel.

Of course, her steel went to many different uses. As a girl steel had been a rare thing, expensive to produce and therefore very limited in what it would be used for. The new techniques that had inspired Blaistrupe to seek her father’s investment for a new foundry had changed that. Steel became cheap, and readily available. Now steel went into everything, from common utensils at the dinner table and iron soles for boots to the frames of increasingly tall buildings and derricks for lifting cargoes from ships.

According to her ledgers, only a fifth of her steel had actually gone to manufacturers who supplied the war. Yesterday alone, one hundred tons had been purchased to make rifles, cannons, buckles, swords, wagon wheel rims, grommets, hinges, and a thousand other of the items needed to supply an army. The rest had gone to fulfill civilian needs.

Even so, she estimated that enough of her steel from yesterday had gone to the war effort to provide every single piece of steel needed to equip two full strength artillery batteries all the way from the guns themselves down to the hobnails in their boots.

It would be hard for anyone to argue that her management had hindered the war effort when faced with those kinds of numbers.

Even so, she realized she would lose everything anyway during the moot tomorrow. She could do everything in her power to change what she could. She could swear to double how much of her steel went directly to the war effort, the elders would still remain staunchly against her. The one thing they truly cared about her, was the one thing she couldn’t change.

Nothing she could ever do would change the fact that she was a woman. No matter how much a place her steel had in the war, she herself had none. That could never change. War was a man’s world, and women would never be allowed even the most remote role in it.

Except…

Her mind wandered back to her first, and only, first hand experience with the war. Yes, she’d been a mere spectator to the event, but the lines of walking, stumbling elven prisoners had been a piece of the war she had encountered personally. Man’s world or not, she had been a witness to that moment to those stretched, gaunt, absurdly built figures trudging through the snow and mud. She had experienced that, at least.

The elves. The enemy. They had killed her husband, and yet seeing them first hand as she had, she found herself sympathizing with their suffering. She suspected not all of their thinness had been because of their alien natures. Hard marches in foul weather was hard on the body, and likely they had not been receiving proper food during their ordeal. She suspected that, were she to strip them of their clothing she’d see hip bones and ribs sticking out from their skin. Beneath their clothes…

She had already seen something. Those figures struggling past her carriage may still have been clothed, but she had already seen past that. In their faces, in their movements, and even in how those concealing garments had moved and hung, she had seen…

Abandoning her pen, papers, and desk, she threw herself out of her chair, dashing for the door. She tore open the door and shouted down the hallway. “Isoli! You read the news! Bring it to me, now! Every paper you still have, no matter how old!”

“Great Lady?”

“Now!”