WHEN THE TIDE RISES – snippet 23:
Morning Harbor on Pelosi
If Daniel had been able to stand outside himself, he'd be the first to say that the Ladouceur would be a joke in a squadron of modern warships. At thirty-eight hundred tons she was smaller than any light cruiser built for a generation and more; she had a mixed armament of two six-inch guns in a dorsal turret amidships and four four-inch guns in lateral turrets offset to bow and stern; and her antennas, instead of telescoping within themselves, folded parallel like the yards.
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BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER – snippet 25:
.IV.
Galleon Southwind,
Margaret Bay;
Gray Ship Tavern,
Hanth Town, Earldom of Hanth
"I still say we should make for Eraystor," Tahdayo Mahntayl grumbled as the galleon Southwind left Hanth Town's smoke-smutted skies astern.
It required a great deal of self-discipline for Sir Styv Walkyr to manage not to roll his eyes heavenward or utter any heartfelt prayers for strength. The fact that he'd at least gotten Mahntayl to finally agree it was time to go somewhere rather than kicking his heels in Hanth Town while he waited for Cayleb to get around to removing his head helped.
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BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER – snippet 24:
"I wouldn't say they're going 'well,'" Howsmyn said more soberly. "Not given what we're up against. But I'd have to say they're going better than I ever anticipated they might. The biggest problem from the perspective of the new artillery, actually, is the competition for the rifles. Not only do they both use up enormous quantities of iron and steel, but they require a lot of the same skilled labor. We're training new people as quickly as we can, but it's still a problem."
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WHEN THE TIDE RISES – snippet 22:
CHAPTER 10: Morning City on Pelosi
Adele reached the entrance to the fenced area where the marquee for tonight's fete was set up. The event was a barbeque: whole animals were being roasted over beds of coals in the central park of Morning City. Lanterns of colored paper hung from the branches of trees, while guards in the livery of the Great Houses–as Pelosi defined them–patrolled the fence that kept out the riffraff. The onlookers outside were ragged, but they seemed glad just to watch.
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BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER – snippet 23:
"How are you coming with the production problems on the iron guns?" he asked Howsmyn.
"Actually, we haven't had anywhere near as many of those as I'd been afraid we might." Howsmyn shrugged. "Not on the cast iron ones, that is. I'm not saying it's as easy with the iron as with the bronze, but our bell-founding techniques have converted remarkably well. I'm starting to experiment with wrought iron, too, but that's incredibly expensive at the moment. It uses an enormous amount more coke, and the furnace time for the repeated firings drives up the cost even more. And then we have to hammer the slag out of the blooms, and even with the new, heavier drop-hammers, that takes an incredible amount of time, which drives costs up still higher. If I can find a way to do all that more efficiently. . . ."
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WHEN THE TIDE RISES – snippet 21:
Morning City on Pelosi
"Don't look so glum, Woetjans," said Daniel as the crowd in holiday clothing cheered the procession. "We certainly can't complain that they're not friendly, can we?"
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BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER – snippet 22:
Rhaiyan Mychail was perfectly well aware that even here in Charis, altogether too many wealthy merchants and manufactory owners had absolutely no regard for their employees as fellow human beings. He and Howsmyn both detested that view. Indeed, Mychail had been an outspoken critic of that sort of thinking literally for decades, and he felt reasonably confident that that was one of the reasons King Haarahld had approached him and Howsmyn when he needed to create the manufacturing basis for his new navy.
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WHEN THE TIDE RISES – snippet 20:
CHAPTER 9: Above Pelosi
Adele was vaguely aware of the bustle as the Princess Cecile prepared to extract from the Matrix, but she continued to pore over information she'd winnowed from the files of Torregrossa Brothers. The less she thought about the details of star travel, the happier–the less unhappy–she was.
"Extraction!" the intercom said enthusiastically. Adele felt her body turn inside-out as the light around her changed. The communications screen that she'd imbedded in the upper left quadrant of her display changed from a pearly blur to a web of color-coded traffic; she expanded it to the upper two-thirds of the total volume, shrinking everything else to a pair of bars across the bottom.
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BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER – snippet 21:
.III.
Ehdwyrd Howsmyn's foundry,
Delthak,
Earldom of High Rock,
Kingdom of Charis
"And how has your day been?" Rhaiyan Mychail asked genially as he stepped into Ehdwyrd Howsmyn's office.
"Hectic," Howsmyn said with a grin, standing to clasp forearms with his longtime business associate. "On the other hand, there could be a lot worse reasons for putting up with all of the headaches."
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BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER – snippet 20:
Sharleyan's face tightened. Not with anger, although Gray Harbor saw anger in it, but in pain. The pain of memory at his oblique reminder of how her own father had died in battle against "pirates" subsidized by Hektor of Corisande when she was still a girl.
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