Quartz (7 page)

“Or he’s after the Keys. He wants to find the Tors Lumena.” Even as he said the words, a tingle ran down Rafe’s spine. The Tors Lumena had been spoken of for so long as a creation of fantasy, the stuff of dreams, an illusion yearned for by poets and idealists. It was hard to comprehend that it might be real, that a Blackstone surveyor had stumbled upon it and seen it with his own eyes.

If someone had found it, might not others? Urgency squeezed Rafe’s heart. He rose to his feet, stood looking at Pyotr.

“We’ll help you,” he promised. “If I can—and I will try—I’ll bring you out of here. To Oakhaven, where the lamps always burn bright.”

A sad smile touched Pyotr’s face. “Fine words, boy.”

“I won’t forget.”

“In the meantime, keep those fires burning.” Isabella had been so quiet that Rafe had almost forgotten she was there. She reached past him, coins in her hand. “For you.”

“I need no coinage. I am not a rat, scrabbling for information to turn into money.” Pyotr rose, put his hands behind his back.

“Then not for your sake, but that of the grandson you may get back. Something to store up for when the ones you love are returned to you.”

Pyotr slowly held out his hand and Isabella dropped the coins into it. Coins that chinked soft yet heavy, gold instead of the paper-thin slivers of tin-iron alloys Blackstone used for currency.

Rafe, standing there, with nothing to offer the old man, felt sick at heart. Isabella was buying the old man, playing on his emotions, turning him into a lackey for her master and he had nothing to his name to counter it.

“I won’t forget you,” he said. The last words he spoke to the old man who let him out.

They saw the stazi, tramping loud and brash, on their way back to the performers’ tents. The crowd melted away before the stazi, leaving the long throat of Moon Alley exposed to their indifferent boots.

Rafe started to turn. Isabella caught his arm. “You cannot help. They may not even be coming for him—his neighbors, perhaps, or just his things. The coins will help him more now than either of us can.”

She was right, of course, but it took everything he had to gather himself, to smile and trade banter with a Blackstone girl more lively than most, to walk away from Moon Alley as if his heart weighed less than a feather.

T
HE
P
ROTECTOR OF
B
LACKSTONE
stepped over the rubble in the mine tunnel. Beside him, the overseer, a solid man in his thirties, lifted the lantern higher to better illuminate the Protector’s way. The Protector gave him a nod and a smile at the courtesy, a brief moment of pleasantry that most did not expect from the austere accountant who had succeeded the passionate and larger-than-life Father of the State. The overseer hesitated, then his lips twitched in return.

Ah, progress.
The man had not been sullen so much as resigned. This particular service to the state, deep within the earth, prying out her treasures, was not sought after.

“This way, sir.” The overseer led the Protector into a roughly-hewn room just off the main shaft. The Protector lifted his feet fastidiously over metal tracks before he entered.

Every single face turned to meet him, wearing varying degrees of sullenness, careful blankness, stoicism. None of them looked happy to see him.

The Protector beamed at them all, then turned as the overseer hoisted up a large sack and upended its contents upon the table.

Several fist-sized chunks of smoky grey quartz, with purple fire in their hearts, spilled onto the rough surface.

Thirty men had labored for six weeks in a formerly abandoned tin mine just for these. The Protector picked up each chunk and examined it. An expectant hush filled the chamber.

The Protector turned to the miners, sitting cross-legged, like students before a teacher. “Citizens, comrades, no…
brothers
, you have done well! You have served your mother, this state that has borne you, nourished you, held her in her arms. You were called away to this urgent mission suddenly, leaving behind children, wives, friends, but you rose to the challenge. This quartz that you have found—mere chunks of rock, you might think—will secure the future of Blackstone.

“Blackstone is proud to call you sons.”

They were not exactly cheering, like they would’ve for the Father, but one or two did sit up straighter. Aware of the skeptical presence of the overseer beside him, the Protector half-turned to say, “Tomorrow you will be reunited with your fellow citizens, carried back to the welcoming arms of your city as it prepares for the glorious New Year. For tonight, there is meat and ale.” That did make an impact. Hope rose like the moon on those faces. Cheers filled the chamber.

“Your overseer will organize you.” The Protector gave a practiced half-wave and a few voices broke into the national anthem. The singers nudged their neighbors and more voices joined in a ragged chorus.

He had never seen a more lackluster effort, but he bestowed yet another of his rare smiles—twice in so short a time!—and led the way out. The overseer followed, carrying the sack into which he had swept the quartz.

Two of the Protector’s personal guard offloaded the last of the food and drink from the lift. The Protector gestured to one, who took the sack from the overseer. He stepped on to the platform and his guards squeezed in after him.

“You have done well, Overseer,” The Protector told him. “You were the right choice for this undertaking. Your superiors spoke highly of your geological knowledge and surveying expertise.”

“The men with mining experience kept us alive in these tunnels and digging right. Borchov, Ferik, others that I can commend.”

“Indeed. I should like you to write up a list and submit it to the Honor Committee.”

The man chewed his lip. His cap was clenched tight in his hands. Then the words burst out, “We will return to the city by New Year’s Day, then? My son, he expected to watch me compete in the ball-tossing, and I promised him…” The man’s voice trailed away—it could be dangerous to show such attachment—but his eyes held a fierce appeal.

“Have I not said it shall be so?” The Protector raised an eyebrow, just as machinery clanked, chains rattled, and the lift rose.

Left below, the overseer looked only half-convinced.

At his camp some distance away from the mine shaft, the Protector accepted a warmer coat and an urgent report from a guardsman. The days were long and the nights short this close to Girdlesday. Cold stars always shone overhead, but Selene the moon brightened the days.

It was a good time to travel overland.

The Protector stood a moment outside his tent, breathing in the crisp cold air, his feet warm from the heat of the earth. He had not been away from the Protectorate in so long, that former palace with its blackened walls and cracked-marble hallways heavy with the ghosts of past years. Industry reigned in those indifferent chambers. Sharp-eyed guards stood to attention. Clerks rustled, scribbled, toted up numbers. Department heads desperately clicked abaci, moved figures from one column to another, all of them trying every trick they knew to keep the state running for just another year.

Yes, it was good to get away from it, even if work led him on and dogged his footsteps at the same time.

With a nod for the young stazi holding the tent flap open, the Protector stepped into its warm lamp-lit interior. He sat down at his portable desk, its collapsible steel legs locked into place, and pens, scratch paper, and a cup of tea already on its smooth surface.

The Protector frowned as he turned over the pages of the report. The Minister of Industry had tried to conceal it, but production was down. The Protector did not spare a glance for all the flowery prose; he went straight to the tables and compared them to each other. A man less at home with cold cruel numbers might’ve been taken in by all the talk of probabilities, unrepresentative samples, and mitigating factors, but the Protector was not fooled.

The numbers didn’t lie.

The Protector pinched his nose. Ironheart’s secession and the ensuing war with Oakhaven had hastened the slide down the slope of insolvency. For all of the Father’s visionary rhetoric, Blackstone had never recovered from the devastation of the Revolution, the wanton smashing and killing and sweeping away of everything connected with the previous regime. They had destroyed their own machines, killed the agricultural overseers, and torn down waterworks, gas lines, and roads. There had even been talk of destroying the mage-made Primary which controlled all the construction and maintenance machinery. He had barely managed to talk the Father and the other zealots out of sending them all back to the pre-industrial era. They’d slowly rebuilt Blackstone these past fifty-some years, appropriating the Free Cities for their resources and manpower, snatching at any offer of a loan. The colony of Ironheart had been their one bright hope, but that had danced away like a firefly out of reach. And now the loans were coming due, from Clearwater, from furtive private lenders in Oakhaven, from the Trans-Point states.

A pity the Father was not around to see what his mob-whipping frenzy had accomplished. The Protector smiled, without warmth, without mirth. The giant who had bestrode the earth and toppled the heads of kings from their shoulders had died as magnificently as he had lived, in the midst of the inaugural feast of the Ironheart expedition, and now an accountant, a number-juggler, sat in his place. Ah, the irony. The Father could’ve used the calculating sense of a mathematician, and now, with the numbers all falling like dominoes, the Protector needed someone with charisma to sway the hearts of the crowd and win support for an audacious scheme.

The time for caution was over. They needed boldness to save them.

The flame he read by thrashed madly, then winked out.

The Protector sighed. “What have you done with the guards this time?”

A soft laugh answered him. A figure twitched out of the shadows. “Ah, they are staring fixedly at the ground in front of their feet, convinced that they are being extremely vigilant while respecting your privacy. Not to worry, they’ll be back at their feet-shuffling soon after I leave. I wonder how you can stand them.” The voice was amused, casual, as if it were talking about children instead of elite guardsmen.

The Protector sat back in his chair. “They are supposed to guard my person.”

“They’re not doing a very good job. Aren’t you glad that you have nothing to fear from me?” Spoken cheerfully. “Yet, that is.” The tone was matter-of-fact, not menacing. The speaker did not need to threaten.

“Why are you here, Karzov?” said the Protector warily.

The Shadow pinned back a flap of the tent, opening a small window. Chill air crept in. “I wanted to be here at the end of the operation. Quite a stroke of genius on your part to send the dissidents into the mine.” The Shadow’s voice was sincerely admiring. “That surveyor had quite a following among the dissatisfied. He certainly was looking to Oakhaven for support.”

“Which is why they insisted on sending this so-called peace mission.” The Protector smiled thinly. “Oakhaven wants dominion, not trade. That man—Furin, is it not?

“Yes.”

“Then he’s the boy’s…?”

“Father.” Karzov shrugged.

“Then we have double reason to get him out of the way. Have the charges been set?”

“Yes, and waiting for you. Shall we?” Karzov bowed and gestured. The Protector rose and left the tent, hunching himself instinctively against the cold. The stazi at the entrance saluted, carefully not looking at the Shadow.

“It is”—Karzov skipped a few steps and twirled, arms wide—“a beautiful day.” His teeth gleamed in his smile.

A short while later, several underground explosions shuddered through the earth. The mines collapsed and rubble filled the main shaft.

Members of the Secret Fist remained at the exits to make sure there were no survivors.

T
HE YEAR’S SECOND MOONRISE
had barely peeked above the horizon when the Blackstone authorities unceremoniously booted the firedancers out of their city. If he hadn’t been so blasted tired, Rafe might’ve been amused at how hastily Blackstone marched out the foreign spy they were so eager to get their hands on.

At least he was in good company. The other firedancers were stumbling and red-eyed, many clearly nursing hangovers. Burgess, still in his show finery, now looking a tad shabby, was unshaven and brooding. Only Isabella looked like she had not been tied to a trolley and dragged through the streets. She was alert, if not fresh. Freshness implied innocence, and there was none of that in Isabella’s guarded eyes.

The first shift was on its way to work as the firedancers, laden with packs and pushing handcarts, wound their way through the city. Rafe stayed in the middle of the group and hoped that none of his erstwhile co-workers from Girdlesday Eve would come by and recognize him.

Blackstone was closed in behind high natural walls of granite. The firedancers staggered out through a narrow gateway and down the steep slope. Rafe had arrived by riverboat, but the firedancers traveled on foot. He privately wondered why they didn’t get rid of most of their jewelry and props. They didn’t really need garishly painted backdrops, did they? Especially since they didn’t even use them in Blackstone?

“I swear that city gets cheaper every year,” said Burgess to everyone and no one in particular. “Only two kegs of ale for the lot of us and not even a hot breakfast before tossing us out.”

“You should come to Oakhaven,” suggested Rafe.

“Everyone goes to Oakhaven.” Burgess gave a deep sigh. “Oakhaven can afford to be picky, and they drive a hard bargain. They know there are plenty of desperate out-of-work performers lined up at the city gates.” Burgess scuffed sand with his boot, raising dust. “But the drink’s better there.” He lapsed into silence and none of Rafe’s efforts could move him to more amiable conversation.

“It’s the post-performance letdown,” Isabella told him when he dropped back to walk with her. She wore her customary somber garb: dull black pants and shirt, dull black hat, dull black boots. A woman in masculine clothing ought to be scandalous, but Isabella only succeeded in imbuing her attire with her own severity.