Father spun as Yanko approached, his mustachios quivering. Fury burned in his dark eyes. “What was that? That was inexcusable. You were so close, but you dithered around, trying to show off.”
“No, I just... wanted them to know I was good enough, better than they thought.”
“They? The other boys? They matter nothing.” Father chopped the air with his hand. “The proctors were all that mattered, the timekeeper. I thought you were smarter than that, boy.”
Yanko wished Uncle Mishnal would come to his defense, but he merely stood in silence, saying nothing. What could he say? What defense was there? Yanko had been a fool, and he knew it.
“Don’t bother coming home until you’ve mastered your pride, boy.” Father flung up his arms, turned on his heel, and stalked away.
Yanko’s mouth drooped open as he stared after him. He wouldn’t even be allowed to return home? To see his cousins? His aunt? His great uncle? His friends in the village? His hounds? His bees and worms and garden?
Where would he go? What else could he do? This was everything he had studied for since childhood, unless one counted tending the gardens and the forest. But whose gardens would he tend if he couldn’t work on the family’s property? He wasn’t qualified to do anything else that people would pay him to do. Even if he came down to the city, would he be able to find a job when everyone seemed to know exactly whose son he was?
Uncle Mishnal sighed, clearly as disappointed as Father, even if he did not storm off in a huff. “You’re always welcome back in the mines, Yanko.”
Back in the mines. Hundreds of meters below the surface of the earth, below the trees and plants and everything he loved. It had been one thing to spend time down there to train for these exams, but to go back? To spend the rest of his life as a miner in the lightless depths of the earth?
When Uncle Mishnal walked away, Yanko had never felt so alone and so lost in his life.
Chapter 2
Yanko stared at the wooden bar between his hands as he walked in a circle with four other men, leaning his weight into it, providing the power that turned the screw and raised carts of salt from the lower depths of the mine to this upper level for processing and packing. His uncle had given him this job on his first day, more than six months ago, to help him build the muscle a warrior was expected to have. It had worked, but unfortunately it hadn’t helped his brain muscles at all. Now, as he huffed and grunted in time with the other bare-chested men, sweat dripping down his arms and back, he saw it as a penance. His punishment for his failure.
“Well, well, well,” came a woman’s voice from behind him. “Look who’s back in the mines. They didn’t want your pretty face at Stargrind, after all?”
Yanko ground his teeth as a second punishment walked into view carrying a box full of carving tools. Lakeo stopped to look at him, a fist on her hip. She wore a shaggy sheepskin vest that left her muscular arms bare, aside from a pair of leather arm guards. Her short, black hair stuck out in all directions, as if she had been struck by lightning recently.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Yanko said. He did not stop pushing or leave the screw, even though he could have at any time. He might have failed his entrance exams, but he was still moksu, and his family still oversaw the mine. Most of the people here were criminals, prisoners of war, or serfs, so he outranked them. Not exactly a great boon.
“Enh, Stargrind is for prissy know-it-alls, anyway,” Lakeo said. “You would have hated it.”
“Uh huh.”
As usual, Lakeo acted as if she was so much more knowledgeable and worldly than he, even though she had grown up in some dusty village not ten miles from here and, by her own admission, had never been over the mountains and to the sea, or to anywhere more than a day’s walk away. She was only a couple of years older than Yanko, but she always seemed to think she was far more mature than he.
“Is this what you’re going to do with the rest of your life?” Lakeo pursed her lips and eyed the screw and the muscled slaves, men too tired and beleaguered to care about their conversation. An overseer stood on a platform overhead, tapping out a drumbeat to keep the men working—and to make sure that nobody started any trouble. Those known for it, or known to be dangerous criminals, wore glowing control collars around their necks.
“I haven’t decided yet. I’ve only been back for a day.”
“Don’t you think you’re kind of a burden on them?” She waved at the workers. “You’re awfully short and scrawny in comparison.”
“I am not scrawny.”
Yanko caught himself flexing his muscles and puffing out his chest, despite the fact that he did not care one iota what Lakeo thought of his physique. If he had been scrawny, he might have simply accepted her ribbing, but he had gained ten pounds of muscle in the months he had been working here. Sure, at five-foot-nine, he might be shorter than a lot of the hulks in the mines, but that was because most were half-breeds or even full-blooded Turgonians, and those people were commonly over six feet. For a Nurian man, he was perfectly normal in size.
“You’re just overgrown.” Yanko bit back an urge to comment on her dubious heritage, having figured out some time ago that she had at least some foreign blood flowing through her veins. In Nuria, that wasn’t considered a good thing.
“If that’s what you need to tell yourself to feel better, go ahead.” Lakeo ruffled his hair. Yanko hoped that was a parting insult, but she added, “I need you down on Level Eight. You know those murals I’m carving by the lift in my oh-so-copious downtime?” She lifted her eyes toward the gray-white salt ceiling and scoffed. “Your art-loving uncle wants a...” She fished in a vest pocket. “A yellow fen tree. Because there’s one in the Hound and the Ferret fable, and I’m doing a scene from it. As if I know what a yellow fen tree looks like. All we have on this side of the mountains are cactus and sagebrush. Maybe a stumpy juniper.”
Yanko stepped away from the screw, waving up to the overseer to find a replacement. This wasn’t the first time Lakeo had come to him for advice on the nature-themed statues and friezes she had been hired to carve in the mine. “Uncle Mishnal isn’t that art-loving. That was the regional chief’s idea, I think. Some notion of turning this into a tourist destination.”
“Right. Because that wedding last spring went so well.”
Yanko grabbed his shirt and headed for the lift. He couldn’t say he was glad to return to Lakeo’s company, not when he had been so looking forward to going home for the two-week visit he would have been due before heading off to Stargrind, but he admitted it wasn’t entirely horrible to have someone familiar to talk to. Uncle Mishnal... hadn’t been chatty on the three-day ride back across the mountains. Father hadn’t even come with them. Yanko hadn’t seen him since he had stalked away after the test, and a heavy stone of guilt weighed upon his soul. He may not have appreciated the burden of becoming a warrior mage, but he had been willing to take it on, because to do anything else could mean that their clan, once known for working closely with the great chiefs, might disappear from the history books altogether.
“This may be your last tree for me,” Lakeo announced as they stepped into the bamboo lift. “Eight,” she added, and the Made artifact that raised and lowered the cage hummed to life up above. They rattled down the dark shaft, past tunnels, some lit, some dark. The clang of pickaxes arose in the distance.
“Oh?”
“This is the last carving your uncle wants, and I’m not staying here to hack mindlessly at the walls.” The cage rattled to a stop, and Lakeo led the way out, stopping in the open circular area outside the lift. Whale oil lamps flickered on the walls, and cart tracks led down six different tunnels. “The pay’s been decent, or at least better than I was making mashing cactus for tequila out on the ranch, and I’ve saved up a little money.” Lakeo patted the flat wall by the lift. She had already carved a forest floor scattered with leaves and flowers.
“Where will you go?” Yanko tried to decide if he would miss Lakeo or not. She did lik
e to torment him, but so few other people in the mine even talked to him, because they were workers and he was the boss’s nephew. He might miss her sarcasm.
“The coast, I think. Maybe to sea. You think your Arayevo ever got on a ship and found your mother?”
Yanko winced. Arayevo had been his babysitter when he had been growing up, his babysitter that he had been madly in love with since age eight or so. When she had come to visit him in the mines, he’d thought it might be because she missed him, because she realized he had become a man and that she might be interested in his... manly attributes. But all she had wanted was a lead on how to find his mother, because she had some notion of escaping an arranged marriage by going to sea and having adventures. Pirate adventures. He couldn’t explain the betrayal he had felt, both because of her willingness to pursue a criminal lifestyle and because she hadn’t been interested in any of his attributes, manly or otherwise.
“She’s not my Arayevo,” Yanko muttered. He had never explained it all to Lakeo and did not want to now.
“Whatever. You ever hear from her?”
“No.” A thought dawned in his mind. “Why? You’re not planning to become a pirate, too, are you?” It wasn’t that he couldn’t imagine Lakeo and her muscular arms stalking around the deck of a pirate ship, but... by the gods, what were these crazy women all thinking? Pirates were shot on sight in any respectable Nurian port, and their ships were chased down and sunk by the Great Fleet.
“Nah, not unless I can be in charge of the pirates. I doubt I’d make a good pirate peon. But I’d like to get out of Nuria, go somewhere where they don’t care about... things. A place where you can openly study... things.”
Yanko did not have any trouble inserting “your heritage” for the first instance of things and “the mental sciences” for the second, but he simply said, “Where will you find this paradise of things?”
“From what I’ve read, the Kyatt Islands.”
“I don’t think many Nurians go there anymore. Since we tried to take over those islands during the war and failed, we’re not that welcome. Hardly fair when you consider that they let the infamous Turgonian war criminal, Admiral Starcrest, live there for twenty years. After all, he tried to take over their islands too. I guess he’s not there anymore, what with being the new Turgonian president. Still, I don’t know that Nurians get the song of welcoming.”
Yanko stopped talking when he realized Lakeo was staring at him as if he had moths flying out of his nostrils.
“What are you babbling about?” she asked.
“The current political situation. Don’t you know anything about what’s been going on in the empire-turned-republic?”
“No.” Lakeo set down her toolbox and plucked out a hammer and chisel. “Why do you? What does it matter down here?”
“Uncle Mishnal has the weekly newspapers from the capital and from Red Sky delivered, and I usually read them and discuss world events with him.”
“Does he make you?”
Yanko was starting to feel like he was a mutant. True, what was going on in Turgonia or on the Kyatt Islands or in any other country didn’t matter much to those working in these remote mines, but he had been taught from an early age that honored families should stay educated and informed, because they could be called into service for the Great Chief at any time. “He encourages it,” Yanko said neutrally.
“Huh.”
Lakeo hammered at her chisel, sheering off a chunk of salt. In its natural state, it was as hard as marble, which was probably why her arm muscles rivaled his own. He wondered if she would find a man on the Kyatt Islands who found such a look attractive. Or if she even sought a man. He had never seen her make overtures to any of the miners. Perhaps she preferred other women.
“Is my tree coming soon, or are you just going to stand there and stare at my arms?” Lakeo asked.
“Uh, right.” Yanko stepped back and closed his eyes, summoning the image of a yellow fen tree to his mind, its massive trunk with vines snaking down it and broad yellowish-green canopy.
“In case you’re wondering, women would rather have their breasts stared at.”
Yanko had been in the process of creating an illusion of the tree in the air, but this blunt statement shattered his concentration. “Er, what? I mean, I was given the impression that you weren’t supposed to stare. That downward drifting eyes could get you smacked.”
Lakeo grunted. “Don’t worry, Yanko. You’re too virtuous for anyone to find you lecherous. Now where’s my cursed tree?”
While he was trying to decide if he had been insulted, Yanko re-formed the illusion. This time, he succeeded in projecting it beyond his mind, and it floated in the air between them.
“Thanks. Hold that for a few minutes, will you?”
“As long as you need.” It wasn’t as if he had to do something, or go anywhere... Yanko kept his sigh inward. Even if he was in the mood to whine out loud, Lakeo would not be the kind of person to empathize with him.
“Good boy. Listen, Yanko. I was thinking.” Lakeo stared intently at her work as she spoke. Though she paused before going on.
He thought about responding sarcastically to her comment, but as usual, he never did. His father had drilled into him from a young age the idea that women, elders, and family members were to be treated with respect. That was probably why Lakeo found him virtuous. Did Arayevo find him virtuous too? Was that why she hadn’t considered him as anything other than the boy she used to babysit?
The leaves in the tree were wavering, and he forced himself to focus on the task again. Having virtue was a good thing, he told himself.
“Since you’re not going to Stargrind,” Lakeo finally said, not commenting on the wavering tree, “maybe you could come with me.”
Yanko gaped at her. “To the Kyatt Islands?”
“Why not? They’ve got a big university there, and you could study the earthy stuff there if you wanted to.” She waved a dismissive hand at the tree.
“How is it that you know about the educational opportunities there, but nothing of the political climate?”
“I’m interested in what I’m interested in and that’s it, all right?”
“I can’t leave my family,” Yanko said, but he paused and considered the words. Was that still true? If he could not become the warrior mage everyone had hoped he could, then was there any reason to stay? Would the Great Chief ever call upon a moksu as lowly as he to serve?
“Yeah, you can,” Lakeo said. “The people in your family that I’ve met are pricks. Just think about—”
A shudder ran through the floor, and salt trickled down from the ceiling. Yanko dropped his illusion and grabbed the wall. A deep bonging reverberated through the mines. The alarm.
“All right, what craziness is going on now?” Lakeo stepped back. She sounded brave, but her gaze darted toward the ceiling as another tremor ran through their level, and more salt sifted down.
“The only other times the alarm has gone off since I’ve been here were when we discovered those insect creatures on the bottom level and we had explosions of methane in the tunnels.”
A faint boom came from somewhere above them. It reminded Yanko of the firecracker the proctor at the test had hurled into the air.
“Does methane set off explosives?” Lakeo asked. “Do insects?”
Explosives. Is that what they were hearing? Maybe someone was blasting new tunnels. Since Yanko had been gone for over a week, he didn’t know what was on the schedule. But that shouldn’t have caused the alarm to go off. Unless someone had miscalculated and started a cave-in.
Yanko called for the lift. A few of the overseers had a modicum of magical aptitude, but Yanko was the only one here who’d had more assiduous training. If there was a cave-in or trouble somewhere, the workers might need his help. The way the alarm continued, those gongs deep and urgent, made him certain this was no accidental triggering of the system.
But the lift never came. Several workers from their level jogg
ed into the open area in front of it, their pickaxes on their shoulders, and soon, a crowd of men had gathered.
“What’s going on?” one asked.
“No idea,” Lakeo said.
“There must be other people calling on the lift.” Yanko imagined everyone racing to it to escape some horrible fate—tunnels filling with methane or some other gas toxic to humans. A chain of cave-ins, each more devastating than the last.
Stop it. Use your senses to check, fool.
Right. He could do that.
“Give me a second,” he murmured, mostly to Lakeo, so she knew to watch his back in case one of the workers decided the confusion would be a good time to club the controller’s nephew in the head and escape.
They were hundreds of feet beneath the surface, and he struggled to stretch up through the layers of salt and tunnels with his mind. He encountered knots of confused and frightened men on each level. The lift must be stuck somewhere near the top.
“That’s the only way out?” Lakeo asked.
Yanko did not know if she was talking to him or the men shifting and muttering behind them, but he didn’t answer. He needed his focus to push his senses farther, higher. Was that the first level? People were running in every direction. He could not tell if the lift was there. The vertical shaft had a feeling of openness that it should not have, not in the mines. Confusion laced his thoughts as what he sensed and what should be failed to match. So many people, so many afraid, but some were angry, some determined, some—
His eyes flew open, realization coming to him.
“Pray to the war gods,” he whispered. “We’re under attack.”
“Attack?” Lakeo asked skeptically. “Attack by who? We’re three days from the coast, and there’s nothing out here. And I do mean nothing.”
“Not nothing,” Yanko said, touching the salt wall. “This is as valuable as silver and a resource. There’s a reason an honored family oversees it.” He switched his focus to his mind’s eye again. “Let me see if I can find the lift, force it to come down. We need to help.”