Quartz, page 5
He fingered cheap beaded bracelets and stared unseeing at stacks of plates and rows of jugs, while desperately-grinning sellers leaned over him. Perhaps he ought to get something for his sister Bryony, some memento to prove his story true, something he could pull out and say, “Aha! See, I really was in Blackstone, on the run, disguised as an itinerant performer!”
If he got out of here alive, he’d have a story to make her smile. Uncle Leo would dismiss his firedancing stint with a wave, but Bryony would see the humor in it. Her life held little laughter as it was. Her mistress, the old Marchioness, worked her hard and paid her little. If only the Queen would approve Bryony’s appointment to her own household…
He had to get home. Bryony had no other champions.
Isabella took his arm and steered him in among the buildings, deeper into the shadows. Here the lights were dim, the stalls smaller, the wares half-hidden and presided over by sullen and suspicious men who sold in front of the crumbling homes they dwelt in.
Isabella murmured into his ear. “If you want the real Blackstone, the cold heart and granite soul and hot blood of Blackstone, this is where you’ll find it. This is Moon Alley.”
They meandered down the narrow street that smelled of smoke and cabbage dinners. Rafe paused to examine the objects hidden under awnings. His fingers touched an explosion of textures. Sand-grit roughness, paper smoothness, a riot of etched lines. Not uniform, not made according to state regulations in a factory, fiercely defiant in their deviation. Oval-shaped, square-shaped, no-shaped. Carved, chiseled, gouged. They were more than cups and plates and pots, they were stories, dramas, secrets at his fingertips.
This was the Blackstone shaped and birthed in the dark by those who lived without light. Rafe, hands wrapped around a squat ceramic mug covered in pinprick patterns, felt a keen sense of blessing.
He turned to Isabella with a sudden certainty. “I know you. You do work for Rocquespur. You acquire art for him. That’s why you know about this place.” His gesture encompassed all of Moon Alley.
“Oh?” Polite disinterest bleached her tone. He struggled to make out her expression.
“You’re the one who beat me to the Tivik illuminated manuscripts in Emerald Market. The bookstall owner—Hatter, was it?—said a woman from Rocquespur had gotten there first. It was you, wasn’t it?”
“You’re determined to put me in a neat box in your mind, aren’t you?”
“It’s true, though, right?” he pressed.
A shrug. “Believe what you wish.” She strode forward to the next stall. It was empty, a gaping cavity under tattered canvas. A short walkway led up to a small brick rowhouse. “We’re here.”
Rafe walked up to the battered door and knocked. Splinters came away in his knuckles.
The door opened a crack, leaking light. A man with rumpled grey hair peered out. “Go away. I’m not open today.”
Rafe caught the door before the man shut it and stuck his foot in the gap. “Berlioz sent me.”
The man blanched. “I have nothing to say to you. Be gone before I send for the stazi.” He kicked at Rafe’s toes.
“I think you should see what he has to say, Pyotr.” Isabella stepped up beside Rafe.
For a moment, Rafe thought that Pyotr was going to faint. His pupils dilated behind his spectacles and he swayed. “You,” he whimpered, staring at Isabella. “Why are you here? Why are you back? I did everything you said. Lights on at all times. I can barely pay for all that fuel. Why are you back?” His voice, low at first, had risen to a hysterical pitch.
“She’s with me,” said Rafe quickly. “I won’t let her hurt you. Let us in, man. Do you really want a scene on your doorstep?” He pushed gently against the door, and Pyotr stumbled back, his arm falling limply to his side. Rafe and Isabella slid in and shut the door behind them.
Pyotr had not exaggerated when he said that he kept his place well-lit. Blackstone did not supply gas lines to individual homes, so a dozen oil lamps burned in brackets in the wall and many more candles flickered upon small tables.
The room was hot, smoky, and stuffy. A pungent herbal smell lingered in the air. Furniture occupied every corner, boxes stood stacked against the walls, pots and pans hung from hooks. A low-grade hum filled Rafe’s ears and tingled in his bones. His skin grew warm where the mage-made device lay against it. He bumped against a small table, then caught the candlesticks upon it before they clattered to the floor.
Pyotr fetched a pair of soy wax candles, stuck them into tarnished silver candlesticks that might have once graced a Goldmoon mansion, and lit them.
Rafe noted that the old man kept the low table between himself and Isabella.
Pyotr sat down heavily on the rug, and made a sit-down gesture with his hand. Rafe and Isabella did so; she gracefully and Rafe clumsily. Sitting upon cushions on the floor was an old Goldmoon custom.
The old man stared into the candle flames. Then, fiercely, “That fool Berlioz is dead.” It was not a question.
Rafe gave a curt nod. “Furin never showed up.”
“That was my Alik.” Shadows etched deeper lines in Pyotr’s face. “They took him about two months ago.”
Sympathy kindled in Rafe. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“If you really were sorry, you’d leave and take her with you,” said the old man, bitterly. “Well. Are you?”
Rafe didn’t move. “I received something from Berlioz. Something that Furin had found, presumably.” He paused, but Pyotr’s expression was unhelpful. Rafe kept his hand from straying to the place where he’d sewn the pamphlet and the plant sample into the lining of his borrowed jacket. “Dragonlace.”
Isabella drew in a breath, a soft sudden intake. Pyotr’s face changed, from stone to melting wax, sagging in astonishment. “So the stories are true!”
“Stories?” Rafe frowned.
Pyotr waved his hand. “You have heard of the Tors Lumena—the Tower of Light—even in your backward country, yes?”
“I have heard legends of a massive pillar of quartz that radiates light, even though it has not been cut or polished, with plants like dragonlace growing in wild profusion around the base.” Rafe shook his head. “If such a thing existed, we’d have seen it. Furin must’ve found a large vein of clear quartz, a great discovery, but not…”
“Silence, boy!” Pyotr smacked the tabletop. The candlesticks skittered. “Did you come here to listen to me or the sound of your own voice?” His eyebrows drew together fiercely.
Rafe bowed his head in acknowledgement of the rebuke. “Continue, sir,” he said with a meekness that had never fooled his older relatives.
Mollified, Pyotr drew his hands back into the overlong sleeves of his patchworked coat and clasped them. His eyes turned dreamy, his voice took on the tones of a storyteller. “Long ago, two moons graced the sky—the twins, Selene and Salerus. They danced around our world in their changing orbits, and under their light, the mages, the true mages, the kayan—not those mincing pretenders in Shimmer—worked wonders of whose like has never been seen since. They say that in those days the combined light of the twins allowed plants to grow out in the wilderness, that the Barrens were green with grass and dotted with flowers. The world was a thing of great beauty, but the creations of the kayan were even more marvelous to behold. Their cities were wonders of glass and light and color. Starfall, the greatest city of them all, glowed so bright it surpassed the light of the twins. Salerus saw this and, mad with jealousy, transformed himself into Dragon.” Pyotr broke off and gave Rafe a hard assessing look. Rafe hoped that his expression showed only considerate attention to a nursery tale he’d heard all his childhood.
“Dragon breathed fire across the land. Starfall fell, utterly destroyed, not even ruins left as witness. The rest of our cities smoldered, the plains burned. This was the time of the Scorching, a terrible time. There were dozens of kayan in those days, but many fell against the might of Dragon and it seemed that the world would perish in flame. In desperation, the last of the kayan, thirteen of them, picked a place where their power would be strongest—a place of shining quartz that cast a radiance across the land. There they confronted Dragon, bound him, and cast him down into the deeps, but in doing so they destroyed themselves and brought a mountain crashing down upon the Tors Lumena.
“In the aftermath of the victory that was almost defeat, with every kayan dead and the shahkayan and rohkayan gone mad, its location was lost to all, except for Kayan Renat.” Pyotr slid a needle-sharp glance at Rafe. “You know of Renat?”
“I do,” said Rafe, gravely. “Every peddler with a curious trinket to sell claims it was made by Renat.”
Pyotr snorted. “He was prolific, certainly. But he kept his secrets close and chose only one family, a Goldmoon family, to guard his greatest treasures—the Keys.”
“I’ve heard of them,” began Rafe.
Pyotr snorted. “You’ve heard of the keys he created to activate fountains of light and other such novelties. No, these Keys are much more powerful, and were given in trust to a great family. I am only a minor offshoot, but all the world knows of the dignity and grandeur of the Ferhani.” Pride straightened his shoulders and spine. “Ah, even you have heard of them.”
Rafe nodded, but his knowledge of the Ferhani was more intimate than Pyotr knew. His father’s mother had been a Ferhani, married into the Oakhaven family for her safety. His great-aunt had barely escaped the Revolution as a young woman. This old man was his distant relative.
Pyotr continued, “The Ferhani kept the six Keys of Renat safe, waiting for a kayan who could use them to lead us back to the Tors Lumena. But not a single kayan has been born in all the generations after the Binding.”
“There’s Shimmer,” Rafe pointed out.
“Bah. They are only rohkayan and not capable of wielding the power of the Tors Lumena. For all they strut and give themselves airs, they are only fit to polish the boots of the great kayan of old.” Pyotr hunched his shoulders. “Then the madness and bloodlust came upon my countrymen and they shattered Goldmoon and all the great families. The Ferhani are destroyed, fled, or in hiding, like me, and the Keys lost.” Pyotr paused, brooding.
Isabella got up, silent as smoke, and did a quick turn around the room. She paused by the door, listening, as if she might hear the beating heart of an eavesdropper.
Pyotr shook himself, and said, wearily, greyly. “Alik was raised on these stories alongside his mother’s milk. More fool I, because when he grew up all he wanted was to become a surveyor and find the Tors. He succeeded but at what price? He is gone, and so is my little Aliki, my grandson.”
“They took your grandson as a hostage?” asked Rafe. If Furin and his son had been taken, perhaps Blackstone had already tortured or blackmailed the secret out of him. In which case, he needed to be back in Oakhaven yesterday.
The old man slumped. “I don’t know. His mother had been estranged from Alik for years over his involvement with the resistance. She told me she’d put Aliki into some special government program. She was quite proud that they’d wanted him, scorch her! My Aliki in some secret training program for the Fist… or worse!” He leaned forward, intense and grim, speaking in an almost-whisper. “Changes are afoot. The stazi used to leave us Moon Alley people alone, but now they raid our stalls and confiscate the remnants of Goldmoon that we have gathered. Word is that the Protector is looking for things made by the kayan.”
“To use them as weapons?” Rafe started up, remembering the odd jumble of items in the train he and Isabella had briefly occupied. “Is it even possible, without a mage? None have been born in centuries, save for in Shimmer.”
“The Protector is raiding families like he raids houses, taking away both children and cherished possessions.”
“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.
Chapter Five
Blackstone, three days ago
THE PROTECTOR OF BLACKSTONE 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.
