04.11.09
The Great City - Chapter 44 - Departure of Shabu
When the word came to Shabu that his father’s powerful friends had convinced him that Shabu’s governance had been so terrible, and that his advocacy for the tribe had been so inept that Shabu could no longer rule the great city, Shabu was very angry. He called a great council of his advisers to find out what action to take.
“In the first place, there is no hope of defying your father. He is a god to the most powerful families in both military and commerce. Most of the men loyal to you owe their places in your government to your father; and they are, therefore, more loyal to him than to you. But you can stall for time. Tell him you need four years to prepare the new prince to rule the Great City. “ This was the first item of unanimous consent.
“In the second place,it is imperative that we reward our friends for their support. So we must write IOU’s from the public coffers to those who supported us. These must be such great sums of money that there is no hope that all the people of the great city now living will be able to pay them off in their lifetimes. And so their children will be forced to work as slaves to fulfil the promises we made to our friends.”
And so the arms merchants and the prayermakers and the owners of great estates were given heaps of gold and promises for more gold than was in the whole kingdom.
“In the third place, there is no question of your leaving the Great City in a condition that can be easily governed. You must divide its inhabitants into factions. The rich vs the poor. The north vs. the south. The uplanders vs the valley dwellers. The worshipers of Vall against the heathen. The old against the young. The men against the women. Even the blind must be turned against those who might help them navigate the world in blindness.” Shabu’s men hired prayermakers to shout from the towers of the minarets. In the rich neighborhoods the prayermakers heaped scorn on the poor for being stupid, uneducated, dirty, shifty, lazy, untrustworthy, and poor. In the poor neighborhoods prayermakers heaped scorn on the rich for being greedy, insensitive, lazy, criminal, and abusive of public trust. The educated were turned from issues of policy to issues of personal well-being. The underclasses were taught to trust only the prayermakers. The heathen were taught to despise the simplicity of the faithful. The faithful were taught to dispise the waywardness of the heathen.
“Finally, we must present the new prince with a problem so big that no other problem seems important and so difficult that there exists no acceptable solution. Then, when he takes power we can mock him from every corner of the Great City both for what he does and for what he does not do. And we can mock him regardless of the choices he makes.”
Shabu’s advisers were at a loss to know what sort of problem would be big enough, serious enough to satisfy these criteria. But Shabu had a quiet adviser with a bald head and a gravelly voice named Ynech. “Suppose the great city were on fire.”
“But we have well trained men. We have equipment. We have procedures. We have firebreaks. We have water in great vessels.”
“So, we need to move the trained men into another country to fight a war. We need to hire mercenaries who are actively hostile to procedures and training and who love nothing better than to get drunk while on duty. We need to sell the equipment. We need to store cooking oil in great open pottery vessels all along the firebreaks so that a single rider on a horse with a torch and a great hammer can ride from vessel to vessel at night, lighting the oil and breaking the pots. And in this way he can set light to the whole of the Great City in an hour’s time. Have the prayermakers invent reasons for each of these new policies.”
So it was ordered. So it was done.
Even before the day of that Shabu was to hand governance of the Great City over to young prince Ambao who would replace him, citizens of the city were nervous about the pots of oil lining the great fire-breaks. A few of those pots had already been set alight “to light the darkness and make the city safe at night.” But it was evident there were cracks in many of the pots, especially the ones that were lit. Where were the firemen? The firemen had been sent away. What about their untrained replacements? They were lying in a stupor in the brothels.
What about the idea of men taking up their own fight against the threat? The pots of oil had their own guards whose public purpose was to keep the pots safe. These guards would let no man near the fire breaks. But little known to the citizenry, each guard had hidden a hammer nearby. And on the agreed signal, they would break the pots. It would not take an hour to set the whole of the Great City alight. It would take twenty seconds. Ynech’s plans were always technically brilliant.
Finally the day arrived. Shabu and his small council left the Great City. As soon as they were outside the city walls, the signal was given. And in twenty seconds the whole of the Great City was in flames.
Young Ambao had seen it coming. But he was not in a strong position. If he accused Shabu of orchestrating the fire, he would lose his place to a prince less able and less principled than he. All he could do was to fight the fire. This would not be easy. Not only were the firefighters gone, but a year back Shabu had imported slaves who, bucket by bucket had drained the lake to irrigate a crop of indigo that his minions had processed into dye and sold to Distant City. There was only enough water for drinking and bathing until the next seasonal rains. The only other resource was a huge heap of heavy twill fabric.
So Ambao organized the people of the city into brigades. Their goal was not to put out the fire where it burned out of control - these areas were lost - but to keep the fire from spreading to new places by beating out young flames with the heavy twill cloth. A tiny amount of water was applied to the cloth until it was just damp. Then the cloth would be swung at tongues of flame as they moved into new territory. This effort would save great swathes of the city, even as others were lost.
It was a great gamble since the twill cloth had some value on the open market but there were few out-of-town buyers for Great City real estate. He was destroying a thing of commercial value to save something that was not. So maybe from a purely commercial standpoint it was not a sound decision. But before the rainy season would come winter. And people of the Great City would die of freezing weather if too many of the homes were destroyed. Furthermore, Great City did much business with entities from far places. And if the whole city burned, all of this would be lost. Much more than the value of the buildings would be destroyed by fire. And hundreds of time the value of the cloth would be lost.
Still, it was a gamble. It might not work. Groups of untrained men, women, and children swatting flames with wet twill was not a pretty site. People did not know how to wield the twill well. Some tried to take on flames that could never be put out this way. Others simply folded up the twill and planned to sell it at a profit when the stocks ran out. But many of the citizens fought the flames well and bravely. Many homes were saved. And many places of business with their stocks of goods survived, too.
This did not, however, cause the prayermakers and the other friends of Shabu to issue utterances of praise. Instead, they mocked the efforts.
“Ha! Ambao has undertaken to fight fire with combustable materials! He is a fool. And those who follow him are slaves and idiots.”
Or
“Ha! Look how Ambao is wasting water. All that water is going to be needed for spring planting of indigo, if the rains are late.”
Or
“Great City never burned like this while Shabu was prince of the city. What kind of ineptitude on the part of Ambao caused this conflagration?”
These kinds of questions and comments were yelled from the minarets by the prayermakers. They were shouted from the high windows in the quarters where men of commerce lived. There were even men in the poor neighborhoods who earned their meager livelihoods by whispering these same doubts to whom might listen.
Even as we speak, the Great City is burning. Even as we speak, Ambao is fighting the fire. Even as we speak Shabu’s friends are mocking his efforts.
What must prince Ambao do next?