Siegestone: Book 1 of the Gemstones and Giants Trilogy

by E. S. Maya

  “Raven attacked Hannah, ma’am,” Safi said, then lowered her head in shame. She listened to surprised whispering that spread throughout the room. Raven folded her twitching fingers and began to sob.

  “Silence!” said one of the enforcers. And there was silence.

  “That will be quite enough, enforcer,” the matron said. She pointed a finger at Raven. “Fighting is banned amongst Blackpoint recruits. One month in the stockades. Get her out of here!”

  “No!” Safi began to shout, but Hannah clasped her mouth shut.

  The matron faced Hannah and Safi as the enforcers escorted Raven from the room. “Now, if I hear so much as a peep from this building for the rest of the night, both of you will be in the stockades right beside her. Understood?”

  “Yes, Matron,” said Hannah.

  “Yeph, Metrm,” said Safi into Hannah’s hand.

  Matron Gertrude nodded curtly, then left the girls to their barracks. The moment the doors snapped shut, Hannah took Safi by the chin, breathing heavy and hot on her face. “Good job, Abed. I’ll make you a deal. You stay out of my way, and I won’t make your life hard. Sound fair?”

  Safi nodded against Hannah’s hand, sniffling.

  “Good.” Hannah stepped out of the way and pointed to her and Raven’s bunk. “You’re not to leave bed for the rest of the night. Go.”

  Safi walked slowly, as if the stares of the room weighed upon her. She took several deep breaths to calm herself, for there remained one last risk to take that the evening. She prayed to the Titans no one would notice. Or that no one would care.

  She reached for the top bunk, pulling herself up to Raven’s bed. She bundled herself in Raven’s blanket and pretended to fall asleep. A few minutes later, she slipped her hand underneath the pillow.

  And felt it—a hard metal lump wrapped tightly in soft canvas. Safi drew out her hand, clutching the enforcer’s coin purse against her fast-beating heart. In the morning, she would have to find it a proper hiding place. She owed Raven that much.

  She shut her eyes, cradling the money how a mother might hold a child.

  It was the first of thirty nights she spent in Raven’s bed.

  35

  Hiding Spots

  There were not so many places, Safi discovered, to hide a bag of money.

  Her bunk chest was out of the question, and so was the underside of her pillow and mattress. She considered trusting it to one of the girls in the kitchen, but when the Matilda and Suzy made no mention of the previous night’s events, the money stayed tucked in the only safe place left—beneath the bib of her canvas overalls.

  She worked through the morning with the coins heavy against her chest, saying hardly a word to Wulf and the boys. They said little themselves. The first day after Blessing was always the worst.

  With her helmet covering her hair, and her goggles and neckerchief masking her face, it felt good to be invisible again. Here in the Foot was the only place where her looks didn’t get her into trouble. Sweat and dust stained her uniform, and from the way she was swinging her pickaxe, she was certain that no one could tell her apart from the boys.

  That was until the familiar swell of fatigue weighed into her arms.

  By the time the lunch bells rang, her upper body was throbbing. She slumped against the drift wall, both hands clutching her chest, her arms, her shoulders. All around her, the boys were stretching their arms and backs, propping their pickaxes against the wall and beginning idle chatter. Even little Jabbar wore the face of weary satisfaction.

  Safi sank to the floor, folding her arms against her quivering stomach. She had grown stronger after a month in the Titan mines, but nowhere near strong enough.

  She glanced at Wulf, who returned a dusty smile. She hadn’t told the boys what had happened to Raven and didn’t intend to. Titans forbid one of them went off and did something about it.

  “What’s wrong with Blondie?” asked Stiv from across the drift. He sat on the floor with his legs stretched wide. “Hasn’t said a word all morning.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with Blondie,” Safi said. She peered down the tunnel, eager for lunch to begin. “Can’t a girl work in peace and quiet?”

  “No girl can find peace and quiet with Stiv around,” Jabbar teased. “You should have seen him at the fights, Safiyas. Just yesterday—”

  Stiv pounced atop Jabbar with remarkable speed, smothering the Abed’s face with his dusty gloved hands. “Don’t you dare tell her about that!”

  Giggling, Safi rested her head on Goggles’ shoulder and sighed. “Why can’t more boys be like you?”

  Goggles squinted through his dusty eyeglasses and shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  The first-years filled their bellies and mined into the afternoon. As Safi’s muscles faltered, her mind began to wander. She thought of Hannah, and came to understand that the head girl’s strength came not from her age, nor her size, but her ability to control those around her. So long as Safi threatened that control, the day would soon come when the fifth-year girl would seek to harm her.

  Team Wulf finished the shift with four full minecarts. Still below quota, but Wulf assured them the day would soon come.

  The late afternoon sky was streaked with thin gray clouds. Wulf led his teammates into the flow of recruits descending the ramp of Cronus’ leg. All the while the coin purse weighed heavily against Safi’s chest.

  More than once, she found herself tempted to ask the boys for help.

  Instead she held her tongue. Her problems with Hannah were her responsibility, and she would protect herself, and her friends, the way she best knew how.

  Silence.

  In the evening, Safi paused her supper to gaze out the chow hall windows.

  An army of fat gray clouds marched streaking across the sky. They were piling upon one another, growing thicker than fresh chimney smoke, until the golden sheen of sunset fell dimly between their ranks.

  The sight put gooseflesh on Safi’s neck. She could almost feel the chill of her old bedroom window, cooling the sweat on her face as she lay in bed bundled in blankets. Through her window, however, was not a horizon of dusty hills, but one clad with gray stone mountains, whose fingertips brushed the storms that swept through the late Andolan springtime.

  As evening chow neared its end, the storm clouds tore asunder, sending a hundred recruits jumping in their wooden benches. Safi remained in her seat, for the sound of thunder was no stranger to her.

  After licking their wooden plates clean, the fifth-year boys stood up from their table. They pooled by the building’s entranceway, taking turns racing in pairs through the gusty, rainswept campgrounds.

  Safi folded her hands and watched as the younger boys did the same. Even Wulf, Stiv, and Jabbar were no exception. All the while the rain came down in sheets, darkening the dust of the camp, making drums of the chow hall rooftop.

  When the boys had all but departed, Hannah rose from her seat at the head of the girls’ table. She started towards the exit and the rest of the girls followed after, gathering around their leader beside the chow hall’s open doorway. Forearms above their hair, and crackling with fits of laughter, they wormed their way out of the building, as if sheer numbers would frighten the rain away.

  None of them noticed Safi, standing still in the doorway behind them.

  With the chow hall empty, there was only the sound of falling raindrops and the kitchen girls scrubbing dishes. Safi sat on the floor by the doorway and removed her boots and socks. She stuck her feet into the rain—tepid, almost as warm as bathwater—and looked over the soaked campgrounds. Farther down the road, the barracks walls shone slick with rain and lanternlight. Small moats of water were gathering around the buildings. To her right, Cronus’ long and broken body nearly matched the gray of the sky.

  She wondered how many storms the Siege Titan had weathered, in both life and death. Perhaps more than she could count.

  After a good stretch, Safi climbed to her feet and hiked up her dress. She picked
up her boots by the shaft and stepped into the springtime rain. The pebbles of the road bit at the soles of her feet and the storm weighed her hair down with rainwater. Nevertheless, she took a deep breath and smiled. For the first time in months, she breathed clean air.

  In the barracks antechamber, over a hundred pairs of shoes sat dripping against the walls, darkening the wood beneath them. She set her work boots at the end of the row, then stripped herself bare of clothing, mopping the dust from her feet with her sopping wet burlap dress.

  Safi entered the main room with her head bent low. The volume in the room softened slightly. She noticed her feet were the same brown shade as the floorboards. Let them look, she thought, as she went to put her clothes away in the cleaning room. Let them see how different I am.

  To great relief, she found Raven’s money where she’d hidden it before supper. Not even the keenest fifth-year would notice an extra lump on an already lumpy pillow. Or so she had hoped. Lifting open her bunk chest, she changed into a sleeping gown and prepared to climb up to Raven’s bed, then gave pause. There was a stack of clothes folded neatly on the bottom bunk.

  “What’s all this?” she asked, awaiting Raven’s response. Some habits were hard to break. She lifted the work shirt by its shoulder seams. Folded beneath it was a pair of canvas trousers with two large patch pockets. It was an extra small miner’s uniform, perhaps the smallest ever. A uniform made just for her.

  She hugged the garments to her chest and looked about the room. Who could have given her such a gift, and at what cost? In Camp Cronus, it seemed everything came with a price.

  “Safi, over here,” called a tiny, wisp of a voice.

  In the adjacent bunk bed lay a skinny, smiling girl with an unremarkable ponytail and the small round ears of a mouse. A gray roughspun blanket covered her chin to toe like the beard of an ancient wizard. Pearl was her name, Safi remembered, one of her fellow first-years. A girl rarely seen or noticed. Balanced precariously on her nose was a pair of delicate eyeglasses, a prized possession indeed. Blackpoint did not offer replacements.

  Behind those eyeglasses stared a pair of excited yellow eyes.

  “Good evening,” Safi whispered politely, matching Pearl’s volume. She nodded towards the antechamber. “Fifth-year girls get your money too?”

  “Only a pittance.” Pearl checked left and right, then lowered her voice further, like a breath of air on a quiet night. “I stowed most of it away before they came and stole it.”

  Safi raised her eyebrows. The girl was cleverer than she looked. “And where in the world did you hide it?”

  “I’ll never tell,” Pearl said, grinning impishly. “It’s not so hard to find hiding places in Camp Cronus.”

  Safi’s eye twitched. “Maybe you could give me some pointers. A girl could use a good hiding place.”

  “I don’t think so,” Pearl said haughtily. “Ask any of my cousins and they’ll tell you—if they were here, I mean, which I’m glad they aren’t—that I’m not one to share secrets, not even my own.” She pointed to the clothes in Safi’s arms and raised her voice above a whisper. “Anyway, Rebecca left those clothes on your bed. She told me not to tell anyone, but I guess it’s okay if it’s you, Safi.”

  Safi stiffened her lips, to keep down a grin of her own. She made a show of gasping dramatically into her hand “You’re certain? That sounds something like a secret to me.”

  “Prophet’s graces!” Pearl clapped her hands over her mouth as her yellow eyes widened. “Well, Rebecca should have said as much!”

  “I had no idea the two of you were friends,” Safi said sadly. “She’s going to be so disappointed when she finds out what happened.” Pearl made a face stricken with grief, so she added, “I suppose I could keep this secret for you, though.”

  “Oh goodness, Safi, thank you!” Pearl said. “And you swear you won’t tell Rebecca?”

  “Miner’s honour,” Safi said, crossing two fingers over her heart. Pearl began to smile, but she cut her off quick. “On one condition.”

  Pearl tossed aside her blanket, hands folded and lips pouting. “Anything!”

  “You show me that secret hiding place.”

  36

  Moving Mountains

  Safi lay awake in Raven’s bed. The barracks looked enormous from the upper bunk, and she could see nearly every girl in the room. There was a weariness about them, she noticed. A sense of exhaustion from their first day back to work.

  Safi felt that exhaustion too. She was certain she had worked harder than anyone, helping to push her team closer to quota. The results were disappointing. She would have felt terrible, had she the energy to feel anything but tired.

  Tired. She was always tired. The boys grew stronger by the day, and the other first-year girls were adjusting to their new lives, but she seemed to be the only recruit unable to keep up with her work. Most of the other mining teams had made quota, and though none of her friends would admit it, it was she who was holding Team Wulf back.

  She rolled on her side and squeezed her eyes shut. If I were only born a boy. Then she could do proper work in the Titan mines, or even back home in Ashcroft. Had she been strong enough, perhaps Mother wouldn’t have had to sell her at all.

  Safi let slip a quiet sob. She was a girl, and nothing would ever change that. Even if she kept up with the workload, she would still be in Camp Cronus, still a recruit of Blackpoint. Life would remain unfair all the same.

  She couldn’t mine and she couldn’t fight. Her encounter with Hannah proved that. She was weaker than any boy she knew. She was without freedom, and perhaps she always would be.

  No, Safi thought. There had to be a way to survive, to escape. She remembered the cold eyes of the warden, those unbelieving gray eyes, wholly convinced that the girl standing before them could never become a miner. But a miner she was, and miner she would continue to be.

  She pictured her father. It was hard to imagine him as once being small, but she knew he wasn’t always the tall, broad-shouldered man of her childhood. Still, his strength felt old and enduring, like a cloud crawling across the sky. She had watched him every morning, leaving their cottage to toil in the iron mines.

  As the mother of her mind’s eye shut the cottage door behind him, Safi shot up in bed, eyes wide open. Her blanket was in her fists. She listened to the empty lanterns squeaking on their hinges outside. To the breathing of her fellow Blackpoint recruits.

  So she had found her answer. Burning up with excitement, she climbed down from the top bunk. She lowered herself to her chest until she lay flat against the cold wooden floor. With her palms against the wood, and her elbows facing up, she took a deep breath and pushed.

  Strength did not move mountains. Persistence did.

  Safi began to train.

  37

  The Long Way Down

  Wielding her pickaxe, one hand on the shoulder, the other around its belly, Safi took quick bites out of the drift wall.

  Pebbles spilled to the floor like crumbs from a sandwich. There was no need to compensate for half-hearted swings, no need to hammer the digging tool down upon poorly-split stones. Work was a mindless precision, a series of carefully weighted blows.

  The result of a full month’s training.

  Safi felt like a pivot upon which her pickaxe could swing. She was rock breaker, stone shaper, and gem seeker alike, eyes ever-keen for the slightest glimpse of color under layer after layer of dead gray stone.

  She paused to wipe the dust from her goggles. Nothing. Not a Siegestone in sight. Not for her, nor any of the miners in Camp Cronus. She sometimes wondered if Wulf was right. If finding a Siegestone really was a fool’s errand. Wondered if she’d even recognize one when she saw it. Wondered if Siegestones were dull little things, treasured for scarcity more than beauty.

  “That can’t be true,” Safi muttered into her neckerchief. Siegestones were brilliant and beautiful, just like the Titan Tales said. All the kings and sultans and emperors of the world wouldn’t send armies
of men to die for simple old gems, would they?

  The drift bells sang their sweet song, and soon the boys were stuffing themselves with sandwiches. Safi matched them bite for bite. Then she matched them swing for swing as the hours passed in a haze. She felt her body tiring but did not slow her work. There was a hardness to her flesh, her bones. A power that endured the force of her newfound strength. Wearily, she smiled.

  “That’s four,” called Stiv behind her, heaping the last scoop of rubble into Team Wulf’s minecart. The shovel clanged to the floor as the boy lowered his neckerchief, taking a moment to admire his handiwork.

  Beside him, Jabbar’s pickaxe cracked at the drift wall. “Better keep that pickaxe moving—Stephan—if you want to make five!”

  “Goggles,” said Wulf, breathing hard, pickaxe slicing away. His arms were dripping sweat under the lanternlight. “Take number four to the Pit.”

  “Yes, Wulf.” Goggles propped his pickaxe against the wall and set himself behind the minecart. With no obvious effort, he sent the full tub rumbling down the passageway.

  Safi stayed her pickaxe to wring the sweat from the belly of her work shirt. The longer the day, the higher her sleeves climbed up her arms. The dust stung at her bare skin, a useful feeling. The pain kept her alert well past lunch.

  She mined on, just another bobbing head, another swinging pickaxe. Not one boy had noticed her progress, and she didn’t expect them to. No special treatment needed, she figured, for doing the job she was meant to do in the first place. She recognized herself and that, she decided, was recognition enough.

  Wulf grunted as he split a slab of stone off the drift wall. Safi noticed that today their team captain was more focused on making quota than finding a Siegestone. Smiling, she set her hands on the shoulder of her pickaxe, tensed her muscles, and began to match his pace.