Then he forced a smile upon his face, and entered the clearing, touching one of his rings so showers of sparks erupted from his hand. He touched another, the one from Weris that played tricks with the air, announcing his presence as if his voice were shouted by twenty others.
“My people! The resources of this great nation! The Keepers recognize your sacrifice!”
Draysky left his house for the first time since returning from the Grinder.
The fever had left him, and when it departed it took his energy with it, and his legs shook as he walked through the snow. He carried his new pickaxe at his side, swinging it and a sack of chits in his other hand in rhythm to gain stability in his walk. Only a portion of the well, yet still enough to counteract the weight of the pickaxe.
He wore his new boots, feeling strange without the crystal-sensing stones taking up the toe’s space. Aila had not added metal plating to his coat, nor had he painted a rune onto his pickaxe. The gloves he wore were soft. His mother had once given them to him for sleeping instead of working, a luxury that would be ruined in the Grinder. Today, there would be no ridging for the outpost. For Draysky, there never would be again.
The crowd awaited the Silver Keeper in the square, their faces turned to where he would enter from the road. A few still straggled in from the side streets having made the trek from the very edge of town.
One family Draysky knew well. The ridger Niel was supported by his wife, still wobbling from the fever that had wracked him over the last few days. A fever that had led to Draysky taking his place in the Grinder. Niel froze, his wife coming to a stop beside him, and caught the shirt of the child before him, holding him back. Then Niel dropped down to one knee, his head bowed to the earth, pulling his child and wife along with him as Draysky passed. Reaching down, he took a handful of shale and threw it underhand toward Draysky’s feet, mumbling a verse that Draysky had only heard uttered twice before. Once when his grandmother had brought a man back from the brink of death, and another when Burnsby had personally prevented a rookie ridger from entering the Grinder with a frayed line about to snap.
“What I pull from the earth, I give unto you.”
“We stand in this together,” Draysky responded, touching Niel’s shoulder as his wife’s eyes widened, recognizing who he was. He shifted, unsure how to further respond. To a ridger, there was no greater gift than what that man had just given. It was a pledge to hold the safety of Draysky and his future children higher than the man’s own.
“Keep moving,” Aila hissed in his ear. “You need to be there when the Silver Keeper arrives. We don’t want to be late.”
Draysky left the man on his knees, then kept walking, his sister slightly back and at his shoulder. The night before, she had rehearsed with him, helping him to find the proper words and correcting his stance. “It’s all about presentation,” she had said. “We are giving them no choice here. They’ll have to concede.” But now, as another ridger spotted him and dropped to his knees, and a third family bowed to let him pass, the rehearsed words felt flimsy, immaterial.
Draysky reached the back of the crowd just as the Silver Keeper pulled up, shouting and waving his hands high in the air, his usual theatrics putting the crowd a step back. Bells rang from his carriage as he stepped down, and Draysky joined the back of the crowd. In front of him, two ridgers nudged each other as they turned to see Draysky, dropping to a knee as their shoulders nudged the ridgers in front of them. The Silver Keeper threw candy in a wave to the waiting children, who snatched it and ran back into the crowd just as two more ridgers turned to kneel.
“The greatest resource in all the kingdom!” the Silver Keeper proclaimed while ridgers five and six fell to a knee before Draysky. “Your names are shouted from the city streets when the crystal arrives, your efforts lauded! How others wish they were as lucky as I, to come in person to see all you have done! Alas, they cannot leave their own work behind, as they too toil to improve the kingdom.”
As he spoke, the back half of the ridgers had reached their knees, their heads bowed away from him. But he spoke more to the air than to them, his eyes on the sky beyond, and had yet to notice the change.
“But I shall bring your tidings to satiate them! They send you their gifts—their salt, their spices, candies and firewood. They spare what they can for your comfort. Just now, my servant is unloading these into the store, for your consumption. Just now–”
The Silver Keeper looked down and faltered as he realized not one of the crowd had their faces on him, except for a small child with an arm outstretched for another piece of candy. Instead, they had folded out in a "V" toward Draysky, the single ridger in the back, whose eyes bore into his own. Draysky stood broad shouldered and tall, larger than any the Silver Keeper would usually call upon for answers, and raised a bag in his left hand high.
A whisper rushed through the crowd, the words repeateding in a wave.
The ridger who stopped the Grinder.
“Silver Keeper!” Draysky called out, the words practiced, his voice recovered and full without any amplifier. “Master of the debts! I bring forth to you what I owe, and with it I cut my tie to this outpost!”
Draysky threw the bag over the heads of the kneeling ridgers, where it landed at the feet of the Keeper, bursting open to reveal hundreds of chits that bounced along the shale. The crowd gasped. Never before had most seen that many chits in one place, and as they quieted, Draysky continued.
“Those are from the extra weight I have borne. From the water I've carried up the mountain, to the vaporweed lighters I've carved, to the excess shale I've mined. Every chit there I pay you for my freedom.” Draysky adjusted his gaze to look upon the ridgers, and he spoke to them as well. “As I have earned my freedom, so too may you. Their bonds cannot hold you.”
The Silver Keeper’s pulsed quickened, and he cast a quick glance to Junice, who was scribbling away in her notebook. This was disorder, the potential for chaos. He, a Keeper, had lost the attention of the crowd to a mere ridger, and a young one at that. He held his hand up for silence in the murmuring crowd, but they paid him no heed, instead focusing on Draysky as he spoke again.
“Silver Keeper, I charge you–” he started, but the Silver Keeper ran his thumb along one of his many rings. His silencing ring, which would create a vacuum around the target with its air aurel, preventing sound from carrying through. Draysky’s mouth continued to move, but no sound passed through beyond a whisper, effectively cut off.
“All in good time, boy, all in good time. The chits shall be counted, and we shall discuss,” the Silver Keeper said. “Now, as I was saying, the goods have arrived! Each of you to receive a free mug of ale as well, from Aleman. And did I hear quota was met? A celebration must be held, one for–”
But his voice trailed away as the crowd started to chatter. For words and stance were not all that Draysky had practiced with Aila. At the back, Draysky’s face had turned red from shouting, and now he raised a finger into the air, pointing towards the heavens. A line trailed after it, burning bright red, one that personified fire itself. The Silver Keeper’s heart turned cold as Draysky finished the rune, and a blast of flame shot into the sky, three feet tall and as wide as a bonfire. On his finger, the ring with the air rune cracked, the kernels held within it popping, and slid off his finger into the snow. Anger flared into Draysky’s voice as the flames dissipated.
“I will not be silenced!” he shouted, and the crowd roared. Dozens of them reached down, pulling up shale and tossing it at Draysky’s feet as he walked through them, murmuring the verse as they created an aisle and Draysky stood before the Silver Keeper. His heart thudded, his eyes flared, and he raised himself to his full height before the man. Forgotten were the Keeper’s magics; instead, fire seemed to run through Draysky’s blood itself, a crackling energy that turned each of his words into a whip. This was not what he and his sister had discussed. Those words were forgotten as his finger that now contained the aurel twitched, and a single word flashe
d through his mind as he looked upon the Silver Keeper’s cowed face.
Burn.
But then, Aila’s hand was upon his shoulder, and he stilled, her words coming to him.
“I have bought my freedom, and I am a drawer of runes,” stated Draysky. “I come to collect what is mine. I demand to be made a Keeper.”
He turned to the crowd, their faces astonished. Burnsby’s head was tilted back, his beard askew as his mouth tilted slightly open. Erki nudged a ridger beside him, Draysky reading his lips as he mouthed, I used to be his partner! His grandmother watched, her cheeks sucked inward and eyes upon the other Keepers at the edges of the square. Far in the distance, he could just barely see the coffin tips of his parents, the shale beginning to claim their lower quarter.
“I leave, and I shall return a Keeper,” Draysky announced. “But always, always, shall I be a ridger. And I will bring you freedom.”
The crowd erupted once more, and Draysky never saw the smile crossing the Silver Keeper’s face. As Draysky departed, the Silver Keeper shouted, his words triumphant, not the false bravado he used in his speeches, but true from his heart.
“A Keeper he shall be!”
Chapter 44: Draysky
A meal awaited Draysky in the wagon. He held his utensils in front of him, the knife at an off angle, unsure how to proceed, for he had never before been served half a duck.
Food in the outpost usually consisted of a liquid composition, a mixture of stews and soups, of soggy vegetables and chunks of gamey meat, sometimes accompanied by bread which would be dipped in the broth for softening.
On the days fruit made its way into the store, it was typically reserved for the Keepers. Only after they had had their pick would the extra bits trickle down, the ridgers buying slices with spoiled ends that tasted of alcohol. But the store rarely had meat, even for the Keepers, and on the occasion it did, it would be the chewy, dried ends of poor choice cuts. The ridgers could bring some meat in from hunting, though it was almost all small animals, as anything larger required a trek away from the shale, and the ice horned elk that roamed the peaks could run faster than the wind.
But this meal seemed entirely solid and entirely meat, something beyond Draysky. The breast stuck to the bones, making his knife slide off the hard surfaces to scrape on the plate, and he fumbled as he tried to cut through the tougher parts. Across from him, on the bench on the other side of the carriage, Oliver raised a napkin to wipe his mouth, his knees only inches from Draysky’s own.
“I’m surprised that they had a duck,” he said, finishing a glass of wine. “This far north, it’s practically unheard of. You’d best savor this meal; it will be several days before we have anything else of substance. Likely only stews.”
The carriage jostled, threatening to tip the wine bottle he now snatched to refill his glass, and continuing.
“But of course, I’m sure that’s not what is on your mind, is it, ridger?”
Oliver was right. As Draysky chewed, his thoughts turned to the night before, gathered with his grandmother and Aila for their final meal together. They’d spent extra chits to make the meal special, breaking open some of the spices his grandmother kept sealed under a stone in the floor, buying bones for stock, and brewing fresh tea from the store.
“Your father would be proud,” his grandmother stated. “Me, I think you are reckless. But I am proud too.”
She looked over the two of them where they sat next to the heater, considering her next words.
“Draysky, I shall begin with you. When you leave here, you must use the Keepers' protection to travel all the way back to their city. Don’t be quick to depart. Learn their ways first, so that you may survive. Often the jungle of people is far more dangerous than the jungle of the wilderness, and far less forgiving. And please, when you do arrive, send a letter, just as the other departed ridgers have done. I do not trust the Keepers, and if I do not receive writing, I will assume the worst.”
“Of course,” said Draysky, “but I’ll do more than write. Someday, I’ll return to free everyone else.”
“I’m sure you will,” she said, though her eyes did not hold the weight of the words. “But there are other things in the world beyond our outpost. Other opportunities. Perhaps,” she said and touched his nose, “you just might find someone special.”
Aila snorted, as their grandmother turned to her. “And you just might find yourself an education. I’ve arranged it with my contact at the university. There is much we know about medicine that he does not from the older ways. You are to take that knowledge to him, along with seeds for the herbs I use. That is your payment, and in exchange, he shall house you. Further, in exchange for your assistance and three years of servitude after completion, he shall cover your educational costs. You are to respect him as you do me. No, more than you do me.
“In a week he will come for you, and you shall leave in the dead of night. Five miles to the east of here he shall wait, the trail to that point marked with red ribbons after you reach the road. Follow them, and do not lose the path, for he will not come searching here for you. He’s created papers for you that state you are his apprentice from another city, and you will not survive without his aid. Even if you do, a life there in poverty may be worse than the one that awaits you here.”
“But what about you?” both Draysky and Aila asked as their grandmother looked down upon them.
“Me? I’ve known little else than this outpost. When you reach my age, it’s harder to learn. That, and I no longer have to work medicine, nor do I have to break my back on the shale. For me, life here isn’t so bad, though it will be quiet. And should I try to travel with you, I would be little more than a weight, if I reached the city at all. Besides, who else will care for the village when a ridger breaks his leg?”
“There are other healers,” Aila suggested.
“And my father was a bird,” she retorted. “No, I stay here. But you two—I will not anchor you down. Take my wisdom with you, but my body remains here.”
The next morning, early as the sun rose, Draysky brought the remainder of the money up from the well. A third of it he placed in his sister’s room. Another third, he took for himself. The remainder he carried to Aleman, pounding on the tavern door with the rising dawn until the man opened with a bleary eye and a grumble.
“Still here, I see,” Aleman said. “And the town’s better for it. We’ll be losing something today, Draysky. Something that gave many of them hope. The man who fell into the Grinder and lived, who stopped a mountain itself.”
“The hope should stay behind,” Draysky answered, then he dropped his bag of chits on the porch next to him, the thud all that Aleman needed to know about his contents. “And this is how you can thank me. There’s enough in this to give my grandmother the best life she could live in the outpost for over sixty years. You’re to use that for her comfort, to keep her from wanting. Never should she hunger, or thirst, or feel the cold’s bite from lack of firewood. This too shall pay for her company. She’s to have her mind occupied. An apprentice doctor, some young girl—and pay her family for her time.”
“This is more than that, Draysky. This is probably five times that amount!”
“Then give her five times the comfort,” Draysky answered. “Don’t you dare squander this on drink or cards, Aleman, and don’t you ever tell the Keepers. If it is used up before her death, I will be back.”
He met the man’s eyes and felt the fire burning at his fingertip. An itch, a desire, and realized all too late that Aleman’s eyes were now watching the thin trail of sparks that traveled to the floor.
“Of course, Draysky. You do not have to worry. I have managed the tavern for long enough that another life is simple. She will be accounted for.”
“Good. For that, Aleman, take ten percent for yourself. And Aleman,” Draysky reached across, grasping the man’s hand, “thank you. I will miss you, and much of what is in that bag once came from the lighters that you purchased from me.”
> “Speaking of!” shouted Aleman as Draysky turned to go. “Those special rune lighters, can you teach it to one of my boys now?”
“I think it is best that the Keepers do not see anyone following in my footsteps for a few months. But that rune is one I learned from my grandmother. If you wish to find its secret, I’d say it’s best you keep her cozy. Maybe send her a young boy to help with the chores. She likes to teach those she is fond of.”
Then Draysky had returned for his final goodbyes, promising to write his grandmother and to meet his sister at the university in the city. And now, in the carriage, Oliver repeated his statement, one that had floated past Draysky’s glassy eyes.
“That’s not what is on your mind. You’re probably wondering what Keeper school must be like and how you can become like me, aren’t you?”
“Not particularly,” said Draysky, as he finished scraping the last of the duck off his plate. He’d cracked each of the bones, sucking out the marrow, then stripped the joint down to the nub on the ends. Setting down his utensils with a clatter, he glanced at Oliver’s plate, where some strips of meat still flagged off bones as the other man leaned back, raising a cup of wine to his lips, the jostling of the carriage threatening to liberate the liquid from its glass.
“Come now. I’m sure you’re wondering how others from your outpost have performed in their positions. Surely, with their drive to lift themselves from the outpost, they would have made a name for themselves in the kingdom? A phoenix reborn to a brightly burning fire. Well, know this.
“Not once have I even heard of them. They likely never even made it past their basic classes. There are no heroes among them. There is a reason you are here in the outpost—you belong here. When you take ice from the north, it melts in the south. And you too will do the same.”
“What would a prized student look like? Were you one of those?" Draysky asked as Oliver poured himself another glass of wine.
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