Motus, page 13
“We’re alright,” Corun said. “My mom’s sleeping just inside.”
Rhyo nodded slowly as if not at all surprised to find Celest outside the confines of her home.
“Good, good. I had to make sure after seeing the state of your place and the pottery studio.”
“What happened?” Corun asked, his eyebrows climbing even as his stomach sank. The compliance officers must have ransacked his quadruplex before coming to the pottery studio and returned after the confrontation with reinforcements. He could only silently despair at the loss of his and his mother’s things, even as Rhyo started recounting his evening.
“Hagen came by the bar with his wife, looking for a place to stay. He said compliance officers were asking questions about you. He lied about knowing you and decided to pack his things and hide out in the Reardistrict before they realized it. I let them stay at my place. Can you believe he said my bed wasn’t fit for two people to sleep in? Then he had the nerve to demand I change the sheets after I told him just how wrong he was. I had half a mind to—”
“Rhyo,” Corun interrupted midtirade. “What happened to my place and the studio?”
“Right. So, since I had no place to stay, I thought I’d crash with you, but your place was a disaster. Your door was open, and nearly everything was scattered about the floor and spilling out onto the street. I think they cut open a sack of flour too. That stuff was everywhere. So naturally I went to your mother’s, but it looked even worse. This was right about the same time compliance officers were swarming the Reardistrict, so I helped drive them out. When I got around to looking for you again, someone said you were both here with Malac. Now I don’t mean to point fingers, but it seems to me that you’re involved in this somehow.”
Corun, his jaw aching from grinding his teeth, motioned for Rhyo to come inside. To his surprise, the stern man guarding the entrance nodded at Corun and let Rhyo pass. He wasn’t sure when he had earned the man’s respect or any degree of authority, but he wasn’t going to let a gift quail fly.
“You could have come to Feldspar’s, not this du . . .” Rhyo began as he scanned his surroundings. When he caught sight of the table of quiet but stern individuals staring at him, his words faltered. “Du . . . delightful place, is what I was going to say. Am I interrupting something?” he asked Corun out of the corner of his mouth.
“Rhyo, this is the Reardistrict union. Everyone, this is my hauler, Rhyo. He is as much responsible for finding the slag as I am.”
“No, no,” Rhyo said, waving off the statement. “He’s fully to blame for all of it. I just threatened the appraiser if he went to compliance officers. But that’s all.”
This received a few raised eyebrows, as Corun had largely glossed over Hagen’s role in identifying the slag.
“You said we could use an appraiser, right?” Corun asked, directing his question at Hesson, the smeltery technician. “Would Hagen do? It seems he’s on the board’s bad side?”
Hesson nodded, surprise lifting his dark eyebrows.
“Couldn’t ask for better than Hagen. He’s as honest as an appraiser comes and doesn’t treat us all like gangue. That can’t be said about any of the others.”
Ruth stood and brushed the wrinkles out of her clothes.
“I think now’s as good a time as any that we sent a delegation to meet with the board. It’s best we keep it small, just a few of us. Varis, Aegir? You both own important businesses in the Reardistrict. I think threatening to withhold liquor and bread will make them more agreeable to our demands. As for you two . . .” Ruth said, her eyes passing between Corun and Cassi.
Cassi shook her head vigorously. He could only imagine the look on Wolfram’s face if he caught sight of the woman from the Archives among the Reardistrict’s delegation.
“I’d just as soon stay out of it and help clean up some of the mess I made,” Corun said, holding up his hands to ward off that assignment. But at the thought of Wolfram, he stood up and located the object he’d placed on the table beside Malac hours earlier. The obsidian knife and its thumb-sized opal pommel gleamed in the light of the bar’s only light bulb. He remembered thinking it could be useful to whomever stitched up Malac’s wound to have as reference. It was a testament to every laborers’ focus on their duties that nobody had made off with it. “But you should take this with you as protection, and thanks for all you’re doing for the rest of us.”
Ruth gingerly accepted the blade. Even she, among the richest of people in the Reardistrict, had likely never held something so valuable.
With the delegation assembled, the room quickly emptied, leaving the establishment’s owner, Corun, Cassi, Rhyo, and Malac. The old miner had long since been tended to and was beginning to drift off under a blanket. Corun motioned for Rhyo to hold back while he rounded the table to speak with Cassi.
“You’ll be going back home then?” He asked. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Wolfram didn’t see me at the studio,” she said. “And even if he did and figured out who I was, they won’t be breaking past our picket line just to reach me. It’s sweet you’re worried, but I’ll be fine,” she said reaching out to squeeze his arm. The fondness in her soft smile lifted a weight from his shoulders, a weight that had been growing with every new problem they faced. At least there was one thing he could claim as a victory today. He had come through it with a new friend, and possibly something more.
After extracting a promise from Gedri to look after his mother, Corun left the Thermal Neutron with Rhyo and stepped onto an equally quiet and deserted street. It felt wrong to break the silence with conversation, so what few words they did share were in whispers, and what few people they encountered they greeted with somber nods.
The further they walked, the more evidence they saw of the riot. Here and there a compliance officer’s helmet or a miner’s broken headlamp sat on the paving stones beside bits of broken glass, twisted metal pipes, and fist-sized rocks. As straight as the city streets ran, Corun could see all the way to the border between the Foredistrict and the Reardistrict and the wall of people gathered there. They traversed nearly the whole length of Motus’s Reardistrict before the faintest sound of the crowd reached Corun’s ears: a sniffle coming from a woman whose arm was in the process of being splinted and secured in a sling. The silence spoke more to the state of tension than the pipes, hammers, and pickaxes in arm’s reach of the defenders. Flat sheets of metal served as a makeshift wall, propped up by rocks and neighboring buildings. This was the picket line.
From the report he’d heard, Corun knew there was another wall beyond this one where compliance officers would be standing guard over their own district. Between them sat an open stretch of paving stones that nobody dared to tread for fear of breaking the fragile peace. In the back of every mind was the knowledge that any casualties would be too many. The future of Motus sat on the shoulders of everyone. While some jobs were arguably more vital than others, if enough laborers perished, their invaluable skills and know-how would be lost with them. If nobody knew how to fill the role of even the most menial jobs, the city would collapse soon after. For now, the balance of power was split evenly between the Foredistrict’s board of directors and the Reardistrict union. Should one withhold a resource from the other unfairly, the other would do the same, until everyone was dying of hunger and thirst in the cold and dark.
Corun resisted the urge to venture any closer for a better look. He had more immediate needs to attend to, like salvaging what remained of his quarters and figuring out where he would be sleeping that night.
“Damn compliance officers. Can’t they see they’re fighting for the wrong side? We already know our origins. If they let the board have their way, they’ll take us in the opposite direction.”
Corun raised an eyebrow, less at the vehemence in Rhyo’s voice than the words themselves.
“You heard?”
“About the Surface? Yeah, that’s the word on the street. But I can’t imagine why they would keep that a secret,” Rhyo said. He emphasized his disgust by spitting on the paving stones, and then from habit, looked around to make sure a compliance officer wasn’t around to fine him for wasting water.
“Because they don’t want us getting the same idea as the last laborers who tried to ascend. And they did more than just keep it a secret. They took away our right to education and healthcare. They don’t want us to have any power over them.”
“Those bastards,” Rhyo said, his fists clenching. “I hadn’t heard that. How did you . . . Wait.” His friend squinted at him. “This is all your doing again isn’t it?”
Corun smirked and proceeded to give him a short summary of his and Cassi’s trip to the Archives and what they’d learned from the phonograph in his mother’s studio.
“Slag. You aren’t kidding. Here I thought you were ditching me at the bar to stir dirt for your mom. But the whole time you were pulling off heists, conning members of the board, and rousing rebellions.”
“Well, when you put it like that, I do sound pretty awesome,” Corun said, adjusting his collar.
“It was all Cassi, wasn’t it?”
“One hundred percent,” Corun admitted.
“If you ask me, that girl should be kept away from this union, or whatever it is Ruth’s thrown together. Her plans never seem to end the way she intends.”
“You’re just sore you weren’t invited. If you had your way, you’d declare yourself chairman and make all the decisions yourself.”
“And Eden would bring me beer and sit on my lap as I delivered my decrees,” he said with a longing sigh.
Their banter effectively dispelled the melancholy until they rounded the corner of Corun’s quadruplex. The door to his room was closed, but a fine white powder coated the doorstep and the paving stones below. Rhyo hadn’t exaggerated about the flour. Shaking his head, he gingerly pushed open the door. The sight that greeted him twisted his stomach. He could salvage everything the flour touched, but not the ingredient itself, and that bothered him more than anything else. None of the furniture appeared broken, but his consumables, sacks of barley, mushrooms, and eggs, as well as a tin of precious quail fat, had been emptied onto the floor. Despite himself, he chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Rhyo asked.
“They wasted food,” Corun said as he wiped away a phantom tear. “We should report them to compliance officers.”
Rhyo shook his head, clearly not amused. Wordlessly, Corun bent to grab a pillow and shook it out on the paving stones outside. They set to work dusting off what they could and sweeping away the rest. Thirty minutes later, they had returned his home to a state of livability, if not comfort. The only thing not salvageable was the bed. The mattress had been torn open and its straw contents spilled onto the floor. Wolfram and his compliance officers had looked everywhere for incriminating evidence, and they had found it. The booklet he’d created from years of Cassi’s pamphlets was gone.
Corun held out his key, as useless as it was with a busted lock.
“You should stay here.”
“Are you sure?” Rhyo asked, taking the key and looking at it with some reverence.
“It’s the least I could do for your help cleaning the place.”
“But where will you stay?”
“With my mother at the bar tonight, then the studio tomorrow. You said it was just as bad as here, so she’ll need my help setting it to rights.”
Rhyo hesitated for a moment before taking the key. “I’ll take care of the place for you.”
“No girls,” Corun warned, holding up a stern finger in the same way his mother liked to do whenever he went out with Rhyo in the evenings.
“I’m a gentleman. I would never bring a girl back here,” he said, holding a hand to his chest in afront. Then, looking forlornly at the closed door, he completed his sentence. “Without a functional mattress.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cold air numbed Corun’s ears and the tip of his nose. With every breath he took, it dried his mouth and burned his lungs. Keeping his eyes closed, he shifted to the left, hoping to share warmth with his mother. Instead of her familiar presence, an empty, cold sleeping mat and blanket met his shoulder. His eyes snapped open. The dim light creeping in beneath the door illuminated shelves with bottles and foodstuffs, reminding him where he was.
With the thought of the Thermal Neutron came the memory of all the events that had brought him there. There was no way he could return to sleep now.
Casting aside his blanket, he quickly tugged on his boots. Fearing he would have to search for his mother, he was relieved to see her the moment he opened the door. She was sitting at the bar across from Ruth, her back to him as she cradled a cup of orzo. The steam from the beverage gave off the familiar scent of liquor, undoubtedly meant to calm her frayed nerves. Ruth leaned across the bar, her elbows resting on its rusty and dented surface so they could exchange quiet words. His mother’s jaw was set resolutely as she nodded in response.
Corun strained to hear what was said but couldn’t make out any of the words over a slew of curses and grunts of pain.
As Corun stepped up to the bar, he caught sight of Malac, the source of the distressed sounds. He hadn’t moved from where he’d been lain on a table the night before, and just like the night before, Carmen leaned over him, ministering to the stab wound. Even as Corun glimpsed the bloodied bandage at his side, Malac gave a final grunt of pain and swatted the woman’s hands away. He pulled down his shirt and rolled off the table, his legs barely catching him as he lowered himself into a chair. The motion inspired another round of curses as Malac cradled his side, but he again waved Carmen away as she rounded the table to assist him.
“You’re awake,” Corun said to his mother, who seemed lost in thought as she regarded Malac over Ruth’s shoulder. Celest turned to smile at him, though it looked forced. “Are you ready to go home?”
“I . . .” she began, but her voice cracked, and her lips went tight.
“I was just telling your mom about the delegation,” Ruth said before she could find the words she was searching for. “We have some good news; the board wants us to continue digging and keep the Reactor and Smeltery running.”
“Of course they do,” Malac said between two heavy breaths, his hand pressing firmly to his side. “The last thing they want is to run out of power. The Foredistrict would have a riot of its own.”
“Dig where, precisely?” Corun asked, afraid their plans to ascend had already fallen apart.
“I told them we would keep the city where it was and harvest the rock around us for the time being. At least until we came to an agreement on other issues. They were as eager to buy more time as we were.”
“So, we can still ascend?”
To Corun’s great relief, she nodded.
From the small, supportive smile his mother cast him, she had already been brought up to speed on the plan. Corun suspected that was the cause of her earlier reluctance. No doubt she worried about him undertaking such a task.
“We can’t afford to go another day without processing ore. The Air Handlers will run low on oxygen stores, which will start cutting into our water supplies, and the Reactor doesn’t have more than a few months of fuel left. We’ll need to find a source of uranium soon, but extracting the trace amounts in the rock around us will buy us more time.”
“When do we start? Where do we start?”
Ruth looked back at Malac, who looked to be lost in thought. When he failed to answer Corun’s question, she repeated it. This seemed to shake Malac out of his revery, and this time, a more calculating expression knit his brow.
“Since this will be a vertical shaft to allow the rock to fall straight down, best we start as close as possible to the Smeltery. That will free up some haulers to hold the picket line.”
“We’ll have plenty of idle compactors too,” Ruth added. “I’ve given instructions to Hesson to extract all we can from the rock to limit the amount of slag we accumulate. Otherwise, we’ll run out of places to store it. Besides, we can use the metal and glass to reenforce our picket line and perform some much-needed renovations to the Reardistrict.”
Corun winced. He couldn’t imagine Cassi standing at the picket line day after day with nothing to do. She’d probably start teaching the laborers math or something.
“The board doesn’t know what we’re planning?” Malac asked.
“I was deliberately vague. Some of the board’s directors were too busy to notice, making demands of their own. Especially Kyan Wolfram.”
“Demands?” Corun asked, feeling a slight chill.
“Largely irrelevant now,” Ruth said, and cleared her throat. The topic was decidedly sensitive. “In the end, Chairman Bertran told him to stop bargaining away the resources of the Foredistrict to settle a vendetta. It was clear the chairman held him partly responsible for all of this.”
Corun snorted and wished he could have seen the look on Wolfram’s face. Undoubtedly the sight of Ruth wearing his precious dagger had contributed to his rash behavior. Now that Ruth no longer leaned on the bartop, he could see the dagger on full display at her hip.
“What about the expertise we need to run the Reactor, Smeltery, and Air Handlers?” Corun asked, continuing to probe her for details.
“They will provide it, though less than before. They were clear that any attempt to coerce their workers into revealing details critical to an industry’s operation would make them withhold all food. They obviously want to avoid us losing our dependance on them.”
“Then we just withhold the water,” Malac said, the growl in his voice sounding as dangerous as a ball mill.
“And we would grow hungry, while they grow thirsty, and then we would all die,” Ruth said, her voice testy as she shut down what sounded like a tired argument. “Our job is to make sure we all stay alive, even if it costs us something in return.”
“You don’t have to tell me about sacrifice,” Malac grumbled, but voiced no further objection as he held his hand more firmly to his side.
