Chapter 19: Lessons
The first rain of winter came without warning and stayed for two days.
Roland stood at his study window and watched the water hit the glass in gusts, each impact spreading a momentary map of ripples that warped the town below into something bent and liquid. The stone streets, draining badly, had filled with fast-moving channels; from above they resembled small rivers, clean and cold. The mountains at the northern limit had dissolved into mist, leaving only the suggestion of elevation at the edge of the visible world.
He knew, in some abstract part of himself, that a photographer would have found something here. He wasn’t in the mood to agree. The rain had stopped construction on the wall, and the satisfaction he’d felt two days ago after seeing Petrov’s expression when he told him Border Town was staying — that satisfaction had begun to thin.
“You said the air around us is made up of different gases.” Anna’s voice, clear and direct, came from the table behind him. “Is that true?”
He turned. She was watching him with her particular quality of attention — not fidgeting, not glancing at the door, simply waiting for an answer as though the question was the only thing in the room.
“It is,” he said.
“Your Highness—” Carter cleared his throat from the wall where he was standing. “She should use the honorific.”
“Let it go.” Roland pulled a chair to the table. “She’s a student right now.”
He had decided to start a class. Karl’s school had given him the idea: if a stonemason could open one, a mechanical engineer certainly could. Ignorance was the root of discrimination, superstition, and most of the other diseases that made this kind of world small. Universal education was the oldest reliable remedy. He had sent for Carter and the two witches, and Barov, but the assistant minister had declined — since winter had begun Barov had been absorbed by something, running the town’s administration with an intensity that Roland found impressive and slightly mysterious.
Carter had come. He was now leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, wearing the careful expression of a man who had agreed to do something he wasn’t certain about.
Nana was sitting with her chin in her hands, having apparently decided the lesson was marginally better than treating wounded animals.
Anna had been paying attention from the first word.
Roland had tried to explain the composition of air — oxygen and something that couldn’t sustain combustion, two gases cohabiting invisibly in every breath. The words had landed clearly on Anna, foggily on Nana, and somewhere in the space between the words and Carter’s ears.
He stopped explaining and went for a demonstration.
He had prepared it in advance: a candle, a glass, a basin, a bowl of limewater. The glass was brownish and thick, as all glass here was, but it would do. He’d tested this once already, early in his time here, to verify that natural law still held in this world. It did.
“When something burns it consumes a gas,” he said. He had Anna light the candle — she did it with a gesture so economical it looked like thought — then placed the candle in the basin and the glass over it. The flame shivered twice and went out.
“The air inside the glass is gone,” Carter said, with the tone of a man confirming something he already knew. “This isn’t surprising. We all know you need air to breathe. Fall into water and you die the same way.”
Nana nodded. The logic was apparently satisfying.
“So the space inside the glass is empty?” Roland asked. He poured the limewater into the basin. It crept up into the glass, rising steadily, and stopped when it had filled roughly half the interior. He lifted one edge of the glass and a few bubbles escaped and rose through the limewater.
Then the limewater in the glass went cloudy. A white mist spread through it slowly, like something waking.
“If there was nothing inside the glass,” Roland said, “the limewater wouldn’t have changed. It wouldn’t have stopped halfway. It wouldn’t have produced any bubbles.” He looked at each of them. “The air contains at least two different gases. The candle consumed one of them. The other remains — colorless, odorless, unable to burn. And what you’re seeing in the limewater is what happens when one of the burned gases passes through it.”
Carter frowned. He was working through the logic with visible effort.
“If you could separate them—” Anna said, and stopped.
“Go on.”
“If you could collect the burning gas by itself, the flame would burn longer. Hotter.” She tilted her head. “And if you could collect the other one — the one that can’t burn — you could put fires out.”
Roland looked at her. She had reached both conclusions in under ten seconds, from a standing start, in a world where none of these concepts had names yet. He had taught her none of the intermediate steps.
“That’s exactly right,” he said.
Carter was still frowning.
He let the moment rest and then continued. The real lesson was not oxygen and carbon dioxide; those were a vehicle. The lesson was: curiosity is productive. The first person who saw lightning set a tree on fire and decided to carry the flame home instead of running from it — that person changed the entire direction of the species. Nature was dense with forces waiting to be noticed, named, and used. The history of civilization was the history of noticing.
Carter looked doubtful when he was done. Nana looked somewhere between present and absent. Anna looked inward, which Roland had begun to recognize as her thinking face.
He would take it.
At the mantel, the kettle began to knock against its lid in a series of small sharp clangs. Carter went to lift it off, wrapped the handle in a cloth, and filled the cups with hot water.
Roland wrapped his hands around his cup and felt the heat through the ceramic. Steam curled off the surface in slow spirals.
From the day humans first had fire, they could see steam. Thousands of years of boiling water. And no one thought to ask what the pressure meant.
He didn’t say this aloud. The kettle, in a few hundred years, would change the world — would drive ships and trains and entire economies of scale. The principle was not complicated. The obstacle had never been the technology; it had been the question. The habit of asking.
This world had witches. Fire from one person’s hands. Healing from another’s. Forces that could substitute for key machinery, that could compress centuries of incremental development into something faster. What he needed to teach was not just the knowledge — it was the habit of asking what the knowledge was for.
He thought: a witch with understanding is worth a thousand witches without it.
They talked until the light died. He fed them dinner and sent them off, and went to his own room with a candle.
He was just lighting it when someone spoke behind him.
“Quite a lecture. I didn’t expect the fourth prince to be a learned man.”
A woman’s voice. No one he recognized.
Cold sweat broke along his spine before the words had finished. He lunged for the door.
A silver dagger struck the wood six inches from his reaching hand, quivering in the frame. He could feel the displaced air against his cheek. If it had traveled six inches more to the right it would have entered his skull.
He stopped.
Chapter 19 Lessons
After entering winter, the first rain finally fell. The rain had already lasted
for two days without stopping.
Roland leaned over his desk and looked out of the window. The rain was
blown upwards by the wind, hitting against the glass again and again,
creating bursts of ripples. Under the refraction of the ripples, the image of the
small town became distorted. The houses and the streets were bent in
deformation, without any regular form. Due to the lack of any effective
drainage measures, the stone roads were interlocked with streams of flowing
water, from afar, it resembled many brooks of clear and crystalline water.
The distant mountains and forests were obscured by mist, and were faintly
discernible, just like the border to the human world.
If such a landscape was placed into modern times, it would certainly be a
tourist attraction, but what Roland wanted to see was a jungle made of
concrete and steel. Because of the rain, the city wall construction also had to
stop. This let his feeling of success, which he got on the day before yesterday
when he “discouraged” the stronghold messenger, fade away.
“You just said that the air around us is made up of many different kinds of
gases, is that true? “
Anna’s clear voice had interrupted Roland’s thoughts, and when he looked
towards her, Anna blinked her beautiful blue eyes questionably.
“Ahem, Miss Anna, you should address His Highness with honorifics,”
warned Carter from the side.
“Don’t be so particular about it,” Roland turned around, “she is now my
student.” During the rain, he had called for Carter and the two witches to
attend their own class – yes, he had decided to open a course of natural
science. He was inspired by Stonemason Karl’s college. If even a mason can
open a school, then could a mechanical engineer open one too? Why did
discrimination exist? Wasn’t it because of ignorance? Universal education
was at any age the most effective measure to promote the development of
civilization.
He originally also wanted to call the assistant minister, but since he was busy
with other government tasks, he declined. Roland didn’t know why, but since
the beginning of winter Roland felt that Barov seemed to be filled with
special enthusiasm, even almost supervising Border Town all alone.
When hearing of the possibility to learn new knowledge, Anna’s eyes
immediately sparkled with interest. Nana, who didn’t need to treat wounded
animals during the lessons, also became very happy. Carter, who was idle at
the moment, attended the class to see what new nonsense the prince had
thought of.
But not long after the class had begun, the knight’s eyes became lax. Nana’s
look also became distant, staring only at the two words ‘Natural Science’ in
a daze. Although it seemed that Anna could not completely understand it, she
still tried hard to remember everything. Roland had to pause his lecture for a
moment to let the three people digest his teaching.
Hearing Anna’s question, he smiled and nodded, “Of course, even though
they look alike.”
“Your Highness, I do not understand, since every gas looks the same, how
can you know that there are different gases?” Carter expressed his doubts.
“I can even prove it to you.”
Roland knew that even with these easy to understand words, most of the
people would be confused by the theories.
He decided to use a simple experiment to arouse everyone’s interest.
A candle, a glass, a basin, a bowl of limewater – these were the things he
had prepared in advance. Although at this time they had only pale brown
glass, far less transparent than the glass of his former time, it was still
transparent enough to be used. After all, this simple test didn’t need someone
to observe the changing process.
Roland had done this test before once, the test results showed that although
there was magic in this world, the rules of nature were still the same as on
Earth. He asked Anna to light the candles, and then he put it in the basin.
“When something is burning, it needs to consume gas. This gas is also
closely linked with every living organism, if we stop breathing, we will be
like this candle. Watch.” Roland put the glass on the candle, and after the
flame shook two times, it soon went out.
“It exhausts the air, sir, this is not surprising.” the chief knight spoke in a
disapproving way, “Of course we will die without air. For example, if we
fall into water.”
Nana also nodded.
“So, do you think that there in the glass is nothing at all?” Roland asked, then
he poured the limewater into the basin, the limewater soon flooded into the
glass, but it finally stopped when only half was filled.
This experiment was so classic that most elementary school teachers liked to
use it as an experiment to increase the interest of the children in natural
science. Roland could still remember the shock he felt when his own teacher
had demonstrated it. From then on he embarked on the road of science and
engineering, with no way to return.
He gently lifted a corner of the glass, and after a few moments bubbles of air
could be seen rising out of the limewater.
Then, the clear limewater appeared to be a little bit cloudy, and a little white
cloud slowly spread within the glass.
“If there was nothing in the glass, we wouldn’t have seen the changes in the
limewater and the air bubbles. This shows that the air contains at least two
different kinds of gases. In fact, burning a candle consumes only a part of the
air, while the other part is unable to burn. Though it is colorless and
odorless, like the former gas, its nature is the complete opposite.”
“Well… That seems to be the case,” Carter thought for a long time to figure
out the relationship between the two, “but to know this, what is the use of it?”
“If you can get the former gas, you can let the flame burn longer, and when
you obtain the other gas, you can quickly extinguish the flames!” Anna
suddenly said.
She was simply a genius, Roland praised her in his heart. Even though there
was a small fallacy, when hearing of the different properties of the gases, she
could immediately think of several uses. This idea was definitely genius-
level. Roland knew that she did not receive any modern education, but even
without it, she could quickly think of this point, showing her extraordinary
logic ability – at least she was far better than this chief knight.
“Right, it is possible to say that since humans learned to use fire, they were
separated from the animals, even though obtaining fire was just a
coincidence. Perhaps the lightning hit the trees and lit them, perhaps a rock
hit another rock and released a spark. But if no one had noticed it, no one
could have tried using it. We would still be the same as the animals. Roland
guided them patiently and systematically in the direction he wanted, “The
goal of this experiment was to show you that curiosity and thinking were the
driving forces of human progress. There are many of similar potential forces
in nature, only waiting for us to discover and use them. “
After his speech, Carter still had a doubtful look. Nana was one of those
types where it was unknown if they were asleep or awake, and she only
looked at Roland with open, unfocused eyes. Only Anna bowed her head, as
if she was thinking about something.
Well, Roland sighed, indeed, teaching too far ahead of the ideas that they
understand will not bring enlightenment; it will only make people feel
perplexed. The height of their knowledge determined that they couldn’t
understand the powerful force of nature unless it was physically in front of
them. Then they would understand how amazing the nature of the hidden
forces in the world were.
At this moment, the kettle hanging from the mantel gave off a clanging sound,
it was the sound of a steam pinging against the lid.
“Ah, the water is boiling.” Carter walked over to remove the kettle with a
fork, and soon the sound stopped. He took a piece of cloth and wrapped it
around the handle, then filled everyone’s cups with water.
For example, when Roland reached out with his hand to hold the cup, he
could feel the temperature of the cup wall. From the first day of using fire,
the principle of boiling water was known. “Boiling water”, hundreds of
thousands of people had witnessed this and used it but no one thought that the
gently curling and rising water vapor could also contain such a tremendous
amount of energy.
In a few hundred years, this would become the driving force behind
humankind’s development; in a very short period of time it would change the
history of mankind. Although the principle was simple, the problem was not
the limited technology. No, the problem was that the first choice for most
people was to farm. But Roland was different from them, he thought, this
world also had witches. Using magic to fight in a battle? That was only the
way of barbarians… with magic someone could create, it could replace
some of the key technologies to hasten the process of human development.
This was the correct way to use magic.
They talked until the sun went down, and after they had eaten dinner together,
Roland went to his bedroom.
There was no nightlife to speak of in this day and age, people didn’t even
have a word for it, and everyone went to sleep early. He also considered
using his right as the prince to recruit a maid to do the sport, but in the end he
couldn’t because he was too thin-skinned to speak out.
Just as he had lit the candle in his room, he could hear behind himself the
sound of applause, then someone spoke to Roland, “It was a spectacular
lecture, I did not expect that his royal highness the 4th Prince was actually a
learned man.”
It was the voice of an unknown woman. Instantly Roland could feel cold
sweat, only god knew how a stranger could get into his room without his
knowledge, if not an assassin what could she be?! He immediately ran
towards the door, even before he had the time to put his hand on the
doorknob, he could feel a cold wind blow near his ear. He discovered that a
silver dagger was firmly inserted into the door, the distance from the dagger
to his cheek was only one finger wide.
TN: If you want to see the experiment, here is a more technical video and
here is a school experiment