“What I can say to you is this, son: Be the man your father wanted you to be. And in time,” he cast a look back to the Keepers, who now were so far away that Draysky could barely see them, “those that deserve it will take their due. It’s the way of the fates.”
Draysky blinked as Burnsby’s words sank in, and the world seemed to press down upon him. What his father had earned from his stipend, Draysky now would have to cover the difference if they were to keep saving. It would be his sole responsibility to fix the house, and protect those within it. If the ritebald returned, would he be able to do any better than his own father? Or would the shattered head of his pickaxe be all that remained of him as three more coffins entered the shale?
He remembered the chits deep in the well as Burnsby spoke of coin, the fortune his father had built up over the years. If the Keepers discovered it, they would find a way to pry it from them. Even if they did not, the ridgers’ families seeking aid would empty the store in a matter of days. There was little he could pull from it without suspicion, but neither could he accept the money from the others.
“We’ll make do without your money,” he said, his voice hollow. “The Keepers offer loans.”
“At exorbitant rates. You’d be best off adding your coffin, son, before you worked yourself to death.”
“Then if there’s any coin to be donated, it can go toward that. Hands, I can accept. Money, I cannot. My pickaxe works, doesn’t it? My arms can swing, my back can carry. I’ll not put another man in more debt to the Keepers or my cause.”
“As you say,” responded Burnsby, but Draysky was not yet finished. He hurled the words from his mouth as if it were the Grinder, and the words shale stones.
“To protect us. Worked out well, didn’t it? Such strong guardians the Keepers are, keeping us real safe. A ritebald in our house.”
Burnsby squared himself, then put a heavy hand down on Draysky’s shoulder. Not quite as a reprimand, but more a warning.
“Now you watch that, son. They may not have been able to stop a ritebald, but neither did you. And they can sure as hell hunt you down where you stand if you’re not careful with your mouth.”
“Yeah?” Draysky could taste the bitterness, as his eyes watered, and his fists clenched at his sides. “If they’re effective enough to even hunt me down. Why should I even be scared of them?”
“Because they have magic, boy. I don’t care how strong your muscles are, or how big your heart, or how dedicated your drive. You saw what happened to Rasmeth, didn’t you boy? He’s far larger than you are. No pickaxe can stand up against that.”
“Then they should do a better job. This is all their fault.” Draysky lifted a piece of shale and threw it as hard as he could against the coffin, where it rebounded with a thud. Burnsby’s hand came down heavily on his arm, squeezing it tight.
“No use in disrespecting the dead. Aye, so it is their fault. What can you do about it? You going to take them on? Try to fight them and leave a spot of ash behind to remember you by? Don’t be foolish, son. Rebuild, and care for what you still have. The world ain’t given us much, but we still have something, and you’d be foolhardy to throw that away.”
They stood there in silence as the sun descended, until Burnsby squeezed his shoulder, then crunched away over the gravel. Draysky stared at the coffins alone, his words ringing in his mind.
What are you going to do about it?
He grit his teeth, exhaling, his mind running through options. What was he going to do? He could follow his father, become the best of the ridgers. Keep carrying extra water rations to make the spare chits, scraping away at the mountainside until the dust stained deep into his forearms. Find a wife, start his own family, and what then? Donate his own children’s lives for the good of the Keepers? Increasing their fortune with each swing of the pickaxe as their own bones wore away?
No, that was no longer an option. His father had spent his life to change Draysky’s. He’d been satisfied to work under the Keepers when they had kept their end of the bargain, but this was more than a failure on their part. It was a betrayal, a breaking of a contract already pushed far against the ridgers. A life of servitude he could tolerate, in exchange for necessities. But now that the ritebald could pick them off at a whim, they were not merely servants: They were fodder.
And if the Keeper’s couldn’t stop the ritebald, how strong could they really be?
You going to take them on? Burnsby’s words echoed.
Why shouldn’t he? Was their magic really that effective against a pickaxe? After all, a hunter could take down a bear if he had surprise. And the Silver Keeper was the only one Draysky had ever seen produce a fireball. What if he showed up on their doorstep tonight, demanding blood?
But no, if he failed, everything would return to normal. Nothing would change. He had to prepare, be ready, learn more. See what they could really do. So that when he did strike, there would be no escape.
Draysky reached down, picking three different colored stones from the ground, and carrying them to the two graves, placing them on a larger slate before it like an offering.
“To protect our family,” he said, setting one down.
“To remind the Keepers of their promise,” he added the next by the first. Then he swallowed, the enormity of his next promise dawning on him. But the words were confident as they left him and settled on their graves.
“To avenge you. To claim the life of the ritebald that stole yours.”
Then he turned, leaving the graves, the two knotted cords tied to their tops fluttering in the wind.
Draysky surveyed the damage to his home, walking in a circle around the destruction. Their common room and his grandmother’s room still stood, but his sister’s and his own had collapsed due to the common walls with his parents’. In their room, the roof had completely collapsed, the support walls nonexistent. His own room fared only slightly better. Two of the supporting walls had crumbled away, and the majority of the roof now covered his parents’ bed. His sister’s room, however, only had one wall damaged, and even the majority of that still stood. The roof would simply require a repatching—the structure was still there, but the thatching had been pulled away, the very top layer that would only take a day of work to fix.
Stepping inside the main room, he shivered despite the red hot stove burning with a fury in the corner. As hot air poured from it, it immediately seeped out through the fresh cracks in the walls and was wicked away by the gaping hole where his parents’ door had once been. Fixing that would be first, plugging it to preserve some of their heat before they ran through their firewood. As his grandmother and sister slept, Draysky fetched his father’s tools, stirring the resin mix in a hole in his parents’ floor and collecting the building stones of their walls. Then he started to work, preserving the largest chunks of their wall first, slathering a heavy layer of resin onto the smooth stone floor as thick as two of his fingers. Fortunately, he still had that foundation to build upon—had he needed to remake that, it would take at least two days of setting to make it properly, else the next time the outpost rumbled from sliding shale, the wall would shake loose.
He grunted as he hefted the first large piece of wall, the old resin still holding the stones together, and settled it into the corner with a thud. The top layer of stone fell away, clattering to the floor as he cursed, trying to catch them before they reached the ground. There would be patients for his sister to see tomorrow, especially without his mother, and she would need her sleep if she were to make it through the day. Now more than ever, they would need her chits.
The second piece of wall he slid into place far easier, the stone almost silent as it ground into position. He used his father’s scraper to glue it into place with resin, the tool little more than a thin, flat stone with a handle lashed to the end. Soon, he would need to mix more of the resin, as those two initial pieces would require almost as much as the rest of the structure to hold them into place. After he was satisfied with his handiwork, th
e resin seeping into the cracks between the stone, he reached over to the sack of resin to create more. His hand missed the bag, and he turned to find it missing, his muscles tensed until he saw Aila ten feet away, mixing more together in one of her larger mortar and pestles, snowflakes resting in her dark hair.
“What’re you doing?” he asked, setting his scraper atop the low wall he had created, already the height of his waist. Those first few feet had been the quickest. The remainder would go stone by stone.
“I saw you were running low,” she said. “And besides, your proportions are off. That resin is too grainy. You’ll need to reapply in the spring if you keep it that way, or melting snow will seep through.”
“No, I meant why aren’t you in bed?”
“Same reason you aren’t. This is my home, too. Don’t you think I should share some of the responsibility?”
“How are you going to tend to patients, then? We need that income.”
“How are you going to go ridging? I can handle myself. Besides, it’s too cold to catch any sleep, and the money is no good if we put it all back into firewood.”
He had no response to that, and she carried the bowl to him, taking up the scraper and applying a layer atop the uneven surface, the broken stones like stairs running up and down the door frame. Beside her, Draysky chose the stones from the rubble, then fitted them into place, wedging them tight to minimize the cracks between them. The layers rose six inches by six inches, filling the doorway up to his neck before Draysky stopped for a rest, his fingers numb from the cold. Their resin, bought to patch rather than to build, was nearly out. He’d need to buy more before they could continue. The Keepers’ store wouldn’t be open until dawn, and already it was halfway through the night, so Draysky bundled the fallen thatching together and stuffed it into the remaining hole left in the wall, effectively clogging it from the wind. Then he walked through the interior of the house, sealing any minor cracks with the remaining resin. Cold still leaked in, but already heat from the stove was winning the battle once more, enough at least for a measure of comfort through the night.
“Where do you plan on sleeping?” Aila asked before disappearing into their grandmother’s room once more.
“For now, out here will do,” said Draysky, blinking as he laid down bedding carried in from his destroyed room. As exposed as it had been to the outside air, it was still frigid, and the blanket he had hung next to the furnace while patching the room still wasn’t quite dry.
“Grandma will be up early to crush the herbs. We have an appointment early tomorrow morning. A Keeper, so we can’t be late.”
Draysky’s face darkened as he turned back to the furnace, letting the warmth seep once more into his bones, not looking at her as he responded.
“A Keeper? Aila, you aren’t seeing any Keepers.”
“And why is that?” She asked, hands on her hips.
“Because they killed our parents! How can you treat someone like that?”
“A ritebald killed our parents. They were negligent, but most injuries come out of negligence. Should I not care for those too?”
“That’s different.”
“They also are our highest paying patients. If the winter wind were to freeze your fingers off, would you stop working on cold days? I don’t think so. The Keepers are the same. What they pay eventually goes to the ridgers in need, who can’t afford the materials I require to heal them.”
“Fine,” Draysky said, throwing his blanket on the floor despite it being only half dry, then crawling under it still in full coat. “But when you heal them, you charge them double. You give them what they need and nothing more.”
“I’ll do what I decide,” she shot back. “You think you’re in charge of me now that our parents are gone? You’re not.” Then her voice softened, and she crossed over to him, sitting at the chair where she mixed her herbs. “But I’m not a charity for the Keepers. They can pay, and they will. As mother said, I charge them based upon what they wear—the nicer the clothes, the higher. But Draysky, don’t be getting any ideas. If you act out, if you do something stupid, it’s not just you that will get hurt. It’s all of us.”
“Then what’s your plan? To be the town doctor until you die? There are other ways out, Aila.”
“You think you’re the only one father showed the well?” she whispered back. “Both mother and grandmother said my fingers are far better than their own for stitching, and that I remember the herbs with a sharper mind than either of them. That money in there had more of a purpose than an escape, Draysky. If I’m to be a true doctor, I have to learn. Some of that is to pay for it.”
Draysky blinked, sitting up.
“You knew?”
“I knew the instant I started earning money that our financials didn’t add up. Two ridgers, two doctors, and we barely stay afloat? How the hell could the neighbors eat, then? Add in all of your lighters, which I don’t see you spending. How you managed not to notice is beyond me.”
“Maybe I had my eyes on other things.”
“On the ground in front of you. Where they will stay. It won’t be much longer, Draysky. We’ll be out of here. Grandmother said there’s a university in the kingdom, not as good as many of the others, but that accepts anyone with talent. In the past, one of the professors there used to write her—many of her cures are not common practice, and he studied some of the older healings, ones forgotten by all but the farthest reaches of the kingdom, where we are now. She says he owes her for her information, and he can get me in. More than that, he can sponsor me as if I were his daughter.”
“You’re planning on going to school after this? And what, just leave this all behind? Leave them behind?” He gestured vaguely toward the Keepers’ tavern, where the song had only recently quieted down as Aleman finally ushered out the last of his guests.
“Isn’t that the point, Draysky? Isn’t that what they would have wanted? Are you planning on returning for some sort of revenge death wish?” Silence followed her words, and she sat there for a few minutes in the night, the flames of the heater dying down to softly glowing coals. When she stood, Draysky could see her wiping away at her cheeks.
“Promise me you won’t do something stupid. We’re so close, we have to get out of here while we can. If we lose that money, we’ll have no chance.”
“I promise,” said Draysky, as she departed. But as he closed his eyes, his mind turned back to the Keepers and what they could do. To runes drawn in the air, spears from which shallow cuts nearly took off his arm, and rings that cracked the earth.
The Keepers were humans. Inept ones at that. Negligent.
Which would only make it easier to discover their secrets.
Chapter 26: Draysky
“Fifteen iron chits for new resin. Picked a bad time for repairs, boy. Last shale slide brought down more walls than all last year. You ridgers are getting lazy putting walls up—used to be sturdy years back. Making my outpost to ruins. New generation trying to take the shortcuts. Next time you’d be wanting to build it right, boy. I won’t stand for shoddiness.”
Store Keeper Weris frowned at Draysky, hefting a twenty pound bag up onto the countertop and dropping it with a thud. The sack was reused, rough fabric that had once carried potatoes and vegetables, now filled from the large container of resin at the back of the shop kept stored under lock.
“I’ll be taking two of them,” Draysky said, placing the chits on the countertop. That morning his sister had worked out the math based on the stash of chits they had found in the remains of their parents' room plus what had been in their pockets. Combined with five percent of the well, that would be enough to buy the resin and a new pickaxe for Draysky, since the previous one had broken against the ritebald.
“We’re not touching the well,” Draysky had declared when she mentioned the cost.
“No? Fine. Then we wait to buy the resin until we have enough saved up. At the rate we’re burning firewood, we’ll need to spend double the amount that we would ha
ve drawn from the well until then, or freeze to death. Do you prefer that?”
She stared him down, and he folded, knowing that the numbers played in her favor.
“Fine, but this time only. No more, not for anything.”
“This isn’t for pleasure, or for us. We’re spending now because it’s the smart move. Draysky, sometimes the better path isn’t crashing right through the obstacles or shouldering the heaviest pack.”
At the store, the Keeper released a heavy sigh in response to Draysky. “Couldn’t have asked before I fetched the first sack, could you have?”
“Didn’t tell me the price until you returned. Who am I to turn down a good deal?”
“You’re just trying to spend another minute in the warmth of the shop, and we both know it boy. Don’t try my patience.”
But it wasn’t the heat or price that had held up Draysky; rather, it was the cracked open door behind the Keeper that he left unattended for just an instant as he shuffled to the back of the shop and started scooping another bag. There the Keepers' tools waited unattended—the forks for sensing crystal, spears, glittering pebbles, and more. Runes dotted their surfaces, too far away for him to discern the necessary details, but close enough to make out their grooves and etchings. What else was hidden in there, besides simple tools? Were there rings like the ones that the Keepers wore, that brought destruction with a simple flick of the thumb?
“Two sacks, that all?” asked Weris, settling the second one down by the first.
“I’ll be needing a new pickaxe as well.”
“You were just in here getting that! Learn to be careful boy! Now hurry along, go and get it. You’ve been in here long enough as it is.”
Draysky returned to the row of pickaxes, choosing one that was both cheap and sturdy. Then he paused, the expensive one on its hook catching his eye once more. But it wasn’t the fine handle or superior workmanship that made him pause, it was the rune chiseled into its metal head. Acting on a whim, he set down the cheap one, then carried the other to the front of the shop, swinging it appreciatively with each step.
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