If it was two and a half times crystal that Oliver wanted, it was two and a half times crystal that he would get, and not a pebble more.
So Draysky bounced around on the end of his line, and mock swung his pickaxe, and fiddled with his harness. After thirty more minutes had passed, he yanked the rope to send the bucket upwards. And halfway up, he froze as he heard the unmistakable gurgling of a shalestrike.
He turned, facing the Grinder as shale started to spew into the air from the center, not yet exploding upward, but only starting to rumble. With his bucket halfway up the mountain, there was nothing to protect him, and this close to the Grinder, where the shale fell thicker and with more velocity, a strike in his direction would mean death by a hundred tiny holes, or one very large one.
Adrenaline surged through him as he searched for something to cover himself with, but any crystal large enough to do that was too heavy to carry, and the shale around him was no larger than his fist. The Grinder gurgled again, as if voicing its displeasure and disappointment as he searched but came up empty, knowing the coat on his back would provide no more protection than paper. Then his eyes fell on his pickaxe, and he started to furiously dig—long strokes, raking out a trough two feet deep, then leaping within. With the handle, he spread the shale back over him like a thick blanket, from his boots to his neck. Then he covered his face with his glove, and packed the pebbles above him as well, closing his eyes shut and breathing through the fabric, the shale all too happy to consume him.
When the shalestrike came, the rocks around him bucked like an avalanche, compressing his chest and pulling at his legs, his joints screaming. His breath quickened as the stone rumbled above him, and he remembered how the shale piled up around his feet when he neglected to move them- the weight on his face growing heavier and heavier with each passing moment. Something punched him in the stomach, hard, pushing the breath out from in him in a cough—shale that would have speared him through had the layers above not protected him, dispersing the impact. Once more the shale around him racked, trying to displace him, before the Grinder lay still, and only the vibration of rock continued about him. Draysky pushed a hand up through the shale, panicking as his fingertips at full extension still brushed pebbles. He squirmed, unsure of his depth or even if he was reaching up, and had not turned upside down in the impact. A chilling thought raced through him: It was possible his squirming efforts were only carrying him deeper, and that soon he would be unable to breath as his body made its slow trek under the shale to be sucked into the Grinder.
Around him, there was only the gnashing, and he struck out, flailing as the rock pressed in on him, rational thought fleeing. Then his arm brushed against the rope, and he seized it, pulling himself up, feeling the reassuring tension that could only be the stake high above him. He wriggled, his muscles burning, lungs filling with dust as much as air. Hand over hand he wrenched, sliding as the rocks parted around him, until his fingers broke the surface first and his face followed. Sunlight grazed his cheeks, and he gasped, pulling in his first breath of clean air as he rose like a dead man from the grave, shaking off shale and dust and snow. He braced as he heard another rumbling, preparing to dive back into the hole. Back to back belches were nearly unheard of. How could the Grinder already be erupting again? For just how long had he been buried?
But the Grinder lay still as he turned to inspect it, and the sound reached out to Draysky from behind him, up the ridge. There, the ridgers at the top raised their pickaxes in a salute, roaring down toward him, the words indistinguishable at this distance. Draysky laughed with relief, then raised his own pickaxe, the metal glinting in the sun, as the bucket tumbled back down toward him.
Draysky remained in the pit despite Burnsby’s tug for shift change. Though the man refused to admit it, he was growing too old for the Grinder. If the dust buildup in his lungs did not claim him, soon it would be a rockslide, or shalestrike, or overexertion from swinging the pickaxe. But now that mining was easy for Draysky, he could manage the entire shift. When the telltale sign of the setting sun cast him into darkness, and he began shivering to his bones, Draysky sent up his final bucket and began the trek back to the ridge.
Oliver had demanded. Draysky had delivered.
Silence replaced cheers when Drasky finally reached the ridge, the last out of the Grinder, shaking the dust off of him.
“Two and a half pay,” he said to Oliver, and the Keeper scowled. “Without me, you would still be far behind your quota. I made the difference.”
“Two times pay,” Oliver said. “That’s good enough for any ridger.”
“You pay me two times, and I will never do that again,” Draysky said, eyes flashing. “You’re still short for the month. You still have three days left. What I did today, I can do again tomorrow, but only if you pay.”
The ridgers bristled, looking to Oliver. Here was one that had pulled up more crystal than they had ever seen in their lifetimes—a man practically worth half a crew. If anything, he was being underpaid. And as Oliver internally debated, the other slights from the Keepers rose to their minds: times when the store had not given them their fair share of resin for their money, or firewood prices had skyrocketed because the Keepers had wished to keep the tavern warm. More than a few gripped their pickaxes. To slight Draysky now was to slight all of them. Here, it was ridger against Keeper.
A ridger who had outworked any of them.
Who then had matched a Keeper in a fight without raising his fists.
And had now pulled an amount of crystal that any of them would have said was impossible that morning.
“Fine,” spat Oliver, sensing the shift in control. “But until we meet quota, you’re doing that again.”
“For two and a half pay,” Draysky agreed, then turned to walk down the mountain as the ridgers followed, leaving Oliver behind. Oliver darted ahead of him after a few moments, taking the lead, but it was not lost on either of them who the ridgers had turned to follow. Oliver shifted uneasily as he walked, his white glove clutched tighter than normal in his hand. When Draysky arrived home, Burnsby followed him, stopping him before he could enter.
“Boy, you’re getting a head on your shoulders,” he said, holding Draysky’s door closed. “I won’t lie to you—what you did today was incredible. I ain’t never seen the mountain spew crystal that fast, not for anyone. But it isn’t worth it, boy. You won’t live long like that. That trick with the double rope? You won’t get so lucky next time. The entire ridge line thought you were dead, but by the hells, you popped right back up like a daisy. The Grinder does not discriminate between shale and human flesh, and it will come for you.”
“I handled it just fine. Burnsby, you don’t understand, it really wasn’t that bad.”
“Psh, you’re young, boy. When you’re my age you’ll look down at your fingers and wonder how you still have so many left. Point is, fate was kind to you today. Days will come when it won’t be. I saw the way Oliver watched you. I saw the way that the other ridgers watched you. After your stunt, half are convinced you’re indestructible, and the other half that you’re already dead. The minute Oliver no longer needs you, he’ll find a way to get rid of you. You’re more of a threat to him, boy, than you are a benefit. So long as he needs crystal, he won’t lift a finger, but the instant he doesn’t,” Burnsby snapped his fingers, and a small puff of dust exploded around his hand. “Gone. Mark my words, boy. If your ridging doesn’t kill you, the Keepers will.”
“I don’t have to do this forever,” Draysky said. “We just need the money now.”
“Can’t spend the money if you’re dead, boy.”
Burnsby left, and the door to Draysky’s house opened. Aila slipped out and shut it behind her.
“What was that about?” she asked as Draysky tried to slip past her, and she slid to block him. “And hells, why are you so dirty?”
“Had to burrow under some shale to avoid a strike,” said Draysky. Aila had helped him mend his clothes after he returned from
the Grinder each day, and naturally her curiosity had prodded out the details of the Grinder and ridging from him. Her first exclamation had been a desire to see it—something Draysky dissuaded immediately, stating that the Keepers would in no way allow onlookers up the mountain. The second exclamation, that they could sneak up at night, Draysky dissuaded even quicker, his thoughts turning to icy paths and the roar of the ritebald.
“You buried yourself? How are you not crushed? Why didn’t you use your bucket?”
“It was on the way back up with crystal, and my lines are longer, so I couldn’t use it.” he said.
“Wait, you’re telling me that there are periods of time you have no protection up there? That you just have to hope the Grinder isn’t about to explode?”
“Well, yes, but usually you can tell long enough before that they can send the bucket back down to you. But like I said, my lines are longer now, so I can dig up more crystal.”
“Then shorten your lines up! Who cares how much crystal you bring up?”
“Aila, we’re lucky. The Keepers are paying me more now that I’m bringing more up.” Draysky said, and he explained to her the events of the last two weeks. She listened, her nose twitching slightly in the way it did when she pondered which herbs to use for an ailment, then paced as he finished.
“Burnsby’s right, you’re going to get yourself killed,” she said, and as Draysky started to protest, she continued. “Hey, I didn’t say you should stop. Just that we should alter your methods. Look, when grandma has me grinding up nottis, which stings your lungs but also stops infections, she has me wear a cloth over my face which cuts down on the pain. We still make nottis powder, we just adapt to do it smarter. All the other ridgers are like normal herbs which wouldn’t hurt me, but your methods are like the nottis plant. So we need to find a way that you can do it safer.”
“I don’t think that safe and the Grinder belong in the same sentence,” said Draysky.
“I said safer. Now, these shalestrikes, how thick are the buckets that protect you from them?”
“Half thick as your pinky finger,” said Draysky, as she walked around him and tugged on his coat. “They work pretty well, but every so often one breaks, and we have to throw it out.”
“Grandmother used to tell stories of men that went to war, and they wore armor. You remember? If that can stop a sword, it should stop shale as well. Hmm.”
For the next hour she thought as Draysky ate dinner, making sketches on the floor with charcoal. When she finished, there were several different shapes scattered across the floor, along with numbers beside them.
“This is how we protect you,” she declared. “Now, find me one of those buckets that’s broken, and we’ll get to work. It’s going to take at least a day, so survive tomorrow, please.”
When Draysky returned the next day, Aila had started to cut the shapes from the bucket by scoring it with shale, and he joined her using his saw. Halfway through, the scores were deep enough to bend the metal back and forth, and it snapped along her lines. Next she cut through the bottom of his coat, adding in the metal plates along the back, then trying the coat on him.
“Stand still,” she commanded as they walked outside, and he turned his back to her. Then she threw a piece of shale as hard as she could at him, and it ricocheted off the metal. Had he not heard it, he never would have even guessed it had touched him.
“Now your back is protected,” she said with a smile. “And your pickaxe is durable. I’d say no ridger on the mountain could match your equipment now.”
But Draysky had not finished yet. That day, in the ridge, it had taken him a half hour to find the vein when he had started, leaping from place to place until he finally struck it. Perhaps it had been a different vein, or perhaps the same one, but either way he’d wasted time. Time that, under pressure, he might need.
Draysky made his way to his workbench, and returned with the rune objects he and Aila had stolen from the Keeper’s store, laying them out on the table. There was a dowsing fork, the tool that Keepers used to search for crystal that the ridgers might be hiding on them after retreating from the mountain. Another object was a thin bronze ring, with a circlet of runes etched along its edge, which Draysky had been careful to avoid rubbing. Then there was a small mortar and pestle that he had discovered deep under the shopkeeper's workbench, forgotten and dusty, with a single rune etched into the bottom of the bowl.
He and Aila had decided to keep the objects hidden for a month after deceiving the Keepers—immediately after interrogating their own ranks with no success, the Keepers had started patrolling the streets more frequently at night, made obvious by their complaints more than anything else. Two houses had been raided when there were reports of the ridgers inside being missing on that night. The reports had been mere rumor, but had resulted in their entire set of belongings being tossed out into the shale and snow as they were searched. Of course, Draysky had not been investigated—over a dozen Keeper witnesses had seen him at the tavern that night, and Aleman would attest that no one had worked harder to enjoy the benefits of making the quota than he.
But now, after the incident had dimmed in the Keepers' minds, Draysky studied the runes on the objects. There were some he knew; one he used on the lighters, and another from his pickaxe. But there was a third that he now focused on more than the others—that of the dowsing fork.
The device itself was a simple metal fork with a small sliver of crystal inlaid right where the metal split, a rune laid over it. There was no handle; rather, his fingers brushed against metal, and like the Keepers, he took off his gloves for skin contact. He pulled his boots over from beside the door—even when searching the ridgers, the Keepers typically avoided waving the wands over their boots. There were too many places for tiny crystals to embed themselves along the sole, shards that wedged in so deep that it would take a half hour to remove them or got into the seams of the leather. Draysky waved the fork back and forth over the shoes, and he nearly dropped it as the metal twitched in his hands. No, not a twitch, but a vibration similar to the Grinder itself. He pushed it close, then pulled it away, moving it back and forth in wonder and curiosity.
“So that’s how it works,” he said as Aila took it and started investigating the effects. “Now, how to use it. Ridging would be far easier if I could tell when I was near crystal, then I could find the vein in only a minute, and– Hey, what’s wrong?”
Aila had dropped the fork and recoiled, holding her arm. When Draysky touched her, the warmth had fled from her skin. The heat slowly returned to her arm, the pale white color filling out once more.
“What just happened? Are you ok?” he demanded, and she nodded, closing her eyes.
“I think it’s like Grandmother said. Using the runes tires you out, but it’s like running," Aila explained. "With practice, you can run longer. You probably can’t even feel its effects since you’ve been around them for so long.”
“Be careful, then,” he said, eyeing her arm again. As far as he could remember, he’d never gone cold, and in those moments, Aila had felt like a corpse. If she had kept using the fork, would it have stopped? Or would the cold have continued until there was no heat remaining to displace it?
“You should too,” she said, then eyed his boots again. “But if you’re planning on using this, you can’t just go around waving the fork on the mountain. If a Keeper sees that, you won’t get out of that punishment. Best case, it’s theft. Worse case, they realize what we did with the ritebald.”
Her nose scrunched for a moment, then she held the fork up to the bottom of his boot, keeping it far enough away to avoid activating the rune.
“Here’s an idea. What if we carved out a piece of your boot, then put this in there and covered it back up? If you’re stepping close to crystal, it should vibrate and let you know.”
“Won’t work,” said Draysky. “Aila, everything in the Grinder vibrates. Especially my boots.”
“Hrm, true, true. There must be another way,
then.” She looked about the room, and her eyes fell on Draysky’s lighters with the Rayflower powder. “Well, you can’t feel vibration, because there is too much of it. But the Grinder is cold—you should be able to feel heat easily! That rune makes the fork vibrate when crystal is close, right? What if it did something else? What if it just made it hotter?”
“And how do you plan on doing that?” asked Draysky.
“Well, what if you painted on top of that rune with rayflower?” she asked. “Worth a shot. If rayflower brings heat, I’m willing to bet whatever they painted this one with brings vibration, or motion.”
Draysky tilted his head, considering. “That might work. Or it might just vibrate when I get too close to a fire.”
“Worth finding out either way. And I think that’s what the crystal embedded in it is for, since that is what you are trying to sense. Whatever they painted on here is white, anyways, not brown like crystal,” she said, and they set to work. Ten minutes later, the tuning fork was finished. A thin line of rayflower was now sketched over the original rune. When they held it to his boots, the tool still vibrated, but then, slowly, it started to warm up. A gentle heat, like that of feeling the warmth of his breath, but still there. Over the next hour, they cut down the fork until only the rune and crystal shard remained, and Aila sewed it into the toe of his boot, where it would have direct contact with his feet.
“If nothing else, it should make you a little more comfortable on the mountain,” she stated. “Keep your toes from freezing off.”
When Draysky returned to the mountain, he did so wearing his armored coat. As the Grinder erupted, he alone among the ridgers continued working, simply standing straight so that the metal pieces on his back clicked together in a shell. When shale struck him, it was like being punched, sending him stumbling, but not piercing through his chest. When he walked up to the ridge, the other ridgers watched in wonder as he would bend over, scattering a small mountain of shale to pull some crystal loose underneath, as if he had always known it had been there, just waiting for him to harvest. They were amazed that whenever he leapt over the ridge, his pickaxe seemed to always know where to strike.
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