Chapter 27: A Friendly Banter

The cold came in harder each morning. Roland slept later each morning in response, which was, he felt, entirely reasonable.

He washed his face and walked into the office to find Nightingale sitting on his desk. Half his breakfast was gone. The remaining portion had reached the temperature of the room.

“I ate the hot part,” she said, not sounding particularly apologetic. “You were late.”

“You ate a prince’s breakfast.”

“You don’t care about ceremony.” She gave a perfect formal bow from her seat on the desk — the same precise bow she’d used the night she came through his window. “I find the whole ritual tiresome on your behalf, so I solved the problem.” She tilted her head. “You should thank me.”

He took the plate and ate what was left. Cold bread was still bread. He had been working on the weapons design since the previous night and his irritation had its own momentum that didn’t depend on breakfast temperature.

Nightingale, despite her stated intention to take Anna and Nana to the Witch Cooperation Association’s camp, had not done this. She had instead developed a habit of appearing in his office at mealtimes, occasionally helping herself to his food, and watching him work with the alert and slightly indolent attention of a cat in a warm room. She no longer bothered with her hood indoors. The pretense of secrecy had quietly been abandoned.

He did not object. She saw things, knew things. Her presence in the room, invisible when she chose, was a form of security he hadn’t had before.

He rolled out a blank sheet of parchment.

Firearms. He had been turning the problem over for days, the shape of it clear but the specifics requiring careful thought. This world had the preconditions: there was a powder the alchemists called snow powder, used at court celebrations for its smoke and light. The formula was wrong — too slow-burning, too much spectacle, not enough force. But the base concept existed, and the correction to the formula was not complicated. What he lacked was controlled production.

The matchlock would come first. Barrel from rolled and drilled iron, hammer mechanism, pan for powder. Three months of work for a skilled smith on the barrel alone, under traditional methods. But with the steam engine as a mechanical driver for a steel boring drill, the barrel production time dropped significantly. He wouldn’t need master blacksmiths — he needed men who could operate a fixed jig and follow a sequence. The work could be standardized.

He made notes. Barrel dimensions, bore diameter, charge ratios for the powder formula. Flintlock eventually, but matchlock first — simpler mechanism, easier to train, and at twelve feet from the wall the accuracy requirements were not demanding. The demon beasts couldn’t climb the walls; the engagement distance would be roughly equal to the wall height. Even mediocre aim would connect.

“You bought ice,” Nightingale said from the desk. She had found the purchasing order. “In winter.”

“To make iced cheese. The current temperature isn’t cold enough to keep it correctly.”

She looked at him. He looked at the parchment.

The ice was not for cheese. The ice was for saltpeter crystallization — a step in extracting purified potassium nitrate from the source material, which was itself a step in producing reliable gunpowder rather than the court’s decorative snow powder. He was not going to explain this to Nightingale. Not because he didn’t trust her intentions, but because he didn’t know her well enough yet, and the applications of firearms were not something he wanted spreading before he controlled their distribution.

The steam engine had been different. The steam engine was useful for so many purposes — mining, transport, manufacturing — that its circulation through the Association couldn’t produce a targeted harm. Guns were different. Guns were tools that traveled in one direction.

“You’re not going to tell me what it’s actually for,” Nightingale said.

“Iced cheese.”

She made a skeptical sound but did not press. She looked at his drawing instead. “The witches in the Association who control fire — could they make a weapon?”

“Not directly. But they could be part of the process.” He put his pen down. “What was the Association before it was a gathering of witches looking for the Holy Mountain?”

She was quiet for a moment. “What makes you think it was anything else?”

“You have skills that come from training. The knife throw was practice, years of it. That doesn’t come from living in a camp in the mountains.”

She looked out the window. “I joined the Association two years ago.”

“And before that?”

“Before that I worked for someone who didn’t know I was a witch.” A pause. Something in her voice that was not quite memory and not quite humor. “If he had known, I wouldn’t have survived the discovery. He was that kind of man.”

“Someone with a use for your ability.”

“Uses. Yes.” She turned back from the window. “Five years ago I stopped working for him. I’m not going to tell you more than that today.” She looked at him steadily. “You’re wondering if I’m safe. The answer is: as safe as anyone who chose their own direction instead of someone else’s.”

He held her gaze. He didn’t have enough to evaluate the claim, and she knew that, and they both knew he’d have to accept the uncertainty for now.

“All right,” he said.

He bent back over the drawing. After a while the room was quiet except for the scratch of his pen and the fire. When he looked up, she was gone — no sound, no footfall, nothing to mark the transition between present and absent.

He folded the parchment and tucked it into his coat.

The flintlock. The matchlock first, then the flintlock. Reliable powder, drilled barrels, a method for the militia to load in under a minute. In three months, maybe fifty weapons. Enough for the first winter. Enough to show what was possible.

He went back to work.

Chapter 27 A friendly banter

Every day the weather was getting colder and colder, and every day Roland woke up later and later.

As a member of the ruling class, he certainly had the right to lie longer in bed, until late morning. In particular,every time he slept on his three-velvet cushion blanket bed, he felt like he was falling into soft clouds Dawdling in this kind of a feeling could help him to boost his mood.

After Roland washed his face and rinsed his mouth he stepped into his office, where Nightingale had already been waiting for him for a long time.

“Well, here is your breakfast. I already ate half of it while it was still hot. But now, it’s cold.” said Nightingale as she pouted and pointed toward the table on which less than half of the bread was left. Looking at this scene, it seemed as if she was the owner of this place and not Roland.

“Did no one teach you to be humble in the presence of a prince?” Roland reached over to take the plates as he sat down at his desk, “I still remember that in the beginning you took etiquette quite seriously.”

He sighed within his heart. He really had not thought that Nightingale would always be around him instead of accompanying Anna. It seemed as if she wasn’t on a mission but taking a stroll in the sun instead. Before, she had always hid her figure. But now, as long as there were no outsiders around she would openly show herself in the office without even wearing her hood.

“Like this?” She jumped off the table and gave a perfect noble bow, “Recently you’ve started to get up late. So, I thought eating your breakfast would help you solve this little problem, Your Highness.” she leaned herself towards Roland,”Anyway, you don’t care, right? I can see that you do not like these tedious rituals. “

Her remark was spot on. Roland silently cursed her. Was there anything she didn’t see?

He sighed, “Take the breakfast with you. After you begin to eat something, you have to finish it. I’ll get another one if I want to eat.”

“As you say, Your Highness!” She gently smiled and went to put the plate at her side.

Roland rolled out a blank parchment, and began to finish the complement design he had drawn partway.

If he wanted to hold Border Town, it wouldn’t be that easy after having a tragic victory in their first fight, so he had to do something. On top of that, his new troops had never seen blood. So Roland was worried that once large losses occurred, his newly trained troops wouldn’t be able to bring up the courage to stand on the walls.

He needed the weapons of his era to gain an absolute advantage over the demonic beasts.

Without a doubt, guns would help.

In fact, this era had all the conditions for guns to appear. Alchemists often created a powder, which was called ‘snow powder’, and was used for court celebrations. But this snow powder had the wrong recipe to be used as gunpowder, it was slow-burning and its explosion was more exaggerated than the damage it did.

In the next one hundred years, the prototype of guns – usable for war, will probably appear. Such firearms, because of their complicated operation, would require the collaboration of two people to shoot. Under normal circumstances they were only used as a single-shot weapon. But in terms of rate of fire and power, they were still not comparable with those of a well- trained archer.

Roland was certainly not interested in a repeat of history.

With the help of the steam engine and the ability of the witches, he could create guns which had real value.

“I saw the purchasing order on the table when you were asleep”, Nightingale swallowed the last piece of bread, and then casually asked, “What do you plan to do with so much ice? It’s winter. If you want to drink frozen ale you only need to put it outside the house, so why would you buy extra ice? “

The upper nobility liked to use ice in the summer – they used it together with saltpeter to enjoy cooled milk, fruit juice, or wine. Since now was the time of the cold season, the price for the acquisition of saltpeter was very low.

“To make iced cheese, the current temperature isn’t low enough,” answered Roland.

Although the woman in front of him wasn’t an enemy, he could not tell her everything like he did to Anna. The steam engine was something different, but things like firearms didn’t require such a high level of technological understanding. Once spread out, their distribution could no longer be controlled. As long as he didn’t know what kind of a person she was, it would be better to keep some things a secret from her. When he thought till here, he said imploringly to Nightingale, “Does the Witch Cooperation Association not only search for the Holy Mountain but also train witches as assassins?”

“No, they just swarm together in order to find the cure to end their pitiful life,” Nightingale waved her hand dismissively, “I joined the Witch Cooperation Association, but that was only two years ago.”

“In other words, you were working for someone else before?” Her excellent knife throwing skills were a product of years of hard training and good instruction, so Roland could confirm that, “So apart from me, there are also other people who are willing to shelter witches?”

“Shelter?” Nightingale’s face became a little strange, “How could… If he had known that I was a witch, he wouldn’t even let me through his door. I’m afraid he would have killed me in secret if I had stayed with him after exposing it to him.”

“Oh? Can you tell me more?”

Nightingale smiled and shook her head, but this time the smile contained many unknown emotions, “Your Highness, you have to wait until the time is right before I tell you. I know what you are anxious about, but please rest assured. Five years ago I got my freedom, and now I no longer need to work for anyone else. “

His verification test failed, it seemed that his charm points were not high enough, ah… But her answers confirmed at least one of his presumptions – at least five years ago, she was a person who was involved in some shady business. Fortunately,it seemed that teaching and using Nightingale was apparently a coincidence, and her former employer was not like himself, who intended to employ a large number of witches.

Roland did not pursue this point any further as he bent over his drawing to finish it instead.

After some time he was a little bit surprised that the usually talkative Nightingale had now become quiet, and the only sound in the room was that of the fire burning. By the time Roland raised his head to stretch his sore neck, he could not detect any sign of her in the office.

“To walk out without saying anything?,” he muttered, as he folded the parchment in his hands and put it into his personal pocket.

The next days he was busy with drawing the weapons designs or testing the already finished designs.

His intention was to make the famous flintlock firearm. This kind of weapon was already tested through history; the difficulty was to make a gun similar to a harquebus. First the gunpowder had to be inserted and then the lead ball was to be loaded. The firing rate was close to three rounds per minute, so it really didn’t require much skill in order to deal with the demonic beasts.

Most of the demonic beasts couldn’t climb the walls, so the shooting distance was approximately equal to the height of the walls, which was twelve feet. At this distance, even with a bad aim it should be possible to hit the beasts,

and the lead ball would also not lose much of its power. If only the skin of the demonic beasts evolved to be as hard as steel, then they could be easily shot and killed.

The disadvantage laid in the production time of a flintlock. It started with the matchlock; the smith had to slowly hammer it into form from the barrel to the trigger. The entire production of a gun would take about three months, wherein the barrel needed the largest part of it. First it had to be beaten into a thin and cylindrical shape, and then the spiral grooves could be engraved. Although without the right equipment it was quite sophisticated, but it should still be possible for a well-learned blacksmith to make a good barrel.

This was also one of the reason that Roland created the steam engine first.

With the steam engine, he could use a steel drill to bore the drill directly into the solid iron, so with this the production speed could significantly be increased. He didn’t need a master blacksmith to do the work, he only needed one table on which he could affix the barrel.