Weeds Among Stone (Jura City Book 1)

by Douglas Milewski

  “You don’t see a train at first, you hear it. First you hear the horn, starting soft then building into a cacophony. Next, you hear the street crossing panic with a clang-clang-clang, those arms slowly coming down and those lights all flashing. Finally, you hear that deep and overwhelming rumble of the cars and wheels on the iron road, clicking and clacking and jostling along that mirror-smooth track, like some long, colorful dragon, scale after scale after scale rolling by. You don’t realize that the train makes so much racket at the time, but once it goes, and silence returns, you realize how noisy that train is.

  “That train was not your friend. Your job was to cross that bridge before the train killed you. Did I say there was a trick? Oh, yes, that was the trick. The moment that you heard the train, you needed to move down that track, going as fast as you could from tie to tie, beam to beam, shore to shore, until you collapsed in the control booth in ecstatic relief, not realizing that you were in such terror, just as you had not realized that the train was so loud, clacking and shaking the world, scale after scale after scale. And when the silence came, and the world stopped shaking, you were alive.

  “Of course, there were more tricks than just dashing out and hoping that you’d get lucky. You had to wait for the right train to come. If the train moved from South Avenue to Main Street too quickly, it was a passenger train. Those were hard to beat. You need to be very brave and very sure of yourself to beat a passenger train. Nobody ever did that I know of. Some tried, of course. They fell into the river and were eaten by turtles. Did I mention the turtles? I did. Good. You don’t want to be eaten by turtles.

  “Jack was in the control booth for the bridge because that was his job. You pulled out your bottle so that he would see you and open the door and let you in the booth. If you were smart, you’d also give him a cigarette or two. If it was a fast train, it would whip by soon enough and you’d be gone. If it was a slow train, you’d be stuck there with Jack for a while and he would start telling you one of his lies.

  “Jack told the most curious lies. They weren’t stories, really. They were more like odd snippets that popped out of his alcohol soaked brain, like little prophecies that came years after the fact and were wrong to boot. He’d say things like, ‘I had to kill the King once. They paid me ten gees to put tacks in his strudel.’ Things like that. At the time, these were pretty awesome things to say. Nobody ever knew what Jack would say, and that is what made Jack fun. At other times, especially while he was smoking that stuff that he smoked, he said profound things. I don’t mean aphorisms, like ‘Don’t spit into the wind,’ or stuff like that. I mean things like, ‘We live here defying our common doom, you and I, and for what? I get a bottle of firewater, and you get fire in your belly, and we get passed by an iron dragon with its burning heart, and you’d think that we would get burned, but we never get burned, because the fire is what fills us. We are here because we lust for the fire that we don’t have and can never find in that city of brick and stone and glass. That’s what sets us apart. That’s what puts us out here, in the air and over the water, fire in our hearts and iron in our hands, while the world shakes around us.’ And like that, line after beautiful line, until that dragon passed by.

  “When the train was gone, you took your leave of Jack and opened the bridge. Those dogs would see you coming the moment that you stepped out and start barking their hearts out. If you were smart, you’d toss that bone high into the air, letting it land near the dogs well before you got there. By the time that you stepped off the bridge, the dogs were far too busy fighting over that bone.

  “Once you hit the shore, you turned right and headed down the river to the boat house. If you were too clean, the crows pegged you as an interloper and ran you off, because crows don’t much like their betters. So you’d take a minute at the pit behind Jack’s house to rub ashes all over your face and clothes, making yourself look like one of them. You'd stroll right up to the boats, push one into the water, then row where you liked.

  “Some things about this memory still make no sense to me. Why didn’t the crows sell the boats? Who kept putting them away in the boat house? Was there some special boat ghost whose curse it was to always put the boats back? Or maybe it was the turtles? Who can say? It didn’t matter. You were something special now. You walked the Iron Road and smoked cigarettes with Jack, and nobody could call you a boy any more.”

  The audience did not clap, sitting silent. The goddess rose, gesturing to Maran. “I have a friend here today. Maran, please come up and read your poem to us.”

  Fear shot though Maran. She had written something? Where was it? She looked all about her table, seeking her poem. Where was her poem? It must be there. Was it on the floor? On her bag? In her car? Panic set in. Maran dashed outside, looking for her car, not finding it among all the other cars parked along the street. Which way was it? Was it around the corner? Maran didn't remember parking it.

  Maran awoke. The dream faded. But Jack, she could still see his face.

  The Forge of Ten Iron Rods

  Through a wrought-iron fence, Maran peered into the Forge of Ten Iron Rods. Behind the fence stood the massive octagonal guildhall of the Ironmongers, rising as high as Lord Cason’s Gate. If she had to pick a random place where she never wanted to go, this would be it.

  Maran girded up her courage then walked around the corner, approaching the first gate.

  A guard saw Maran approach and stopped her. “Cockroaches use the drifter gate.” He pointed down the avenue.

  As Maran turned away, the guard spit in her direction.

  Maran passed by three more dwarf-only gates before she came to the gate that the drifters used. The guards there eyed her curiously, then shrugged. “The paper says to let you in, so go in. Follow that food wagon to the kitchen.”

  Unbelievably, Maran walked into the forge grounds. She took three steps and she was there. It all seemed so easy. She had expected far more trouble than this. Maybe everything would be this easy. Maybe now was the right time for the Loam to come back to the city.

  Moving to the center of the brick yard, Maran turned around, examining the smokestacks. Most belched black, burning charcoal. The smoke smelled odd. It wasn’t Loam charcoal. They must be importing it now, but Maran had no idea who could supply Ironmongers with enough wood.

  Maran wandered around the guild house until she came to the kitchens. Large groups of children, both dwarves and drifters, ranged about the area, playing any number of childhood games. Maran recognized some of them, but didn't recognize others. Those must be drifter games.

  When Maran entered the kitchen, she stopped to gape. Its size beggared her imagination. Did Ironmongers do everything big? The kitchen was a single huge room held up by massive iron pillars. Inside that space was a myriad of activities: stoves, ovens, roasting spits, sinks, racks, and vats. How many drifters worked here? How many Ironmongers must they feed? Countless drifters moved everywhere in a frenzy of activity. She waved a random drifter down.

  “Where is Freifrau Quema?” Maran asked. Respectful fingers pointed deeper into the kitchens, to an older dwarf woman shouting orders. If not for her own grandmother’s demeanor, Maran might have been intimidated by Quema’s metal-gray eyes and demanding tone. Maran walked straight over to her.

  Freifrau Quema noted her as she approached. “You must be that Loam Strikke mentioned. Let me see your papers.” Maran handed them over and waited. “I haven’t seen one of you folk in a long time. It’s good to have you back. Are there more of you?”

  “It’s just me, Freifrau.”

  “Why do you want to work here?”

  “No good reason, ma’am. If Strikke had recommended the Kalts, I would have gone to them.”

  “Fair enough. Things are different than the old days. If you want to be a meister in this kitchen, you’ll have to earn it. Drifters do the work. Supervisors supervise. We order, they obey. Right now, you don’t fit at all into that system, but I’ll solve that problem later on. I think you’ll b
e worthwhile having about. For now, I’ll take you on labor scale as a foreman. Go to Meister Bochen in the bakery and we’ll see how you work out.”

  Freifrau Quema pointing her finger. Maran moved on. She was hired with nary a fuss.

  Taking a look as she walked around, Maran did not approve of the kitchen. Her grandmother would have a screaming fit. A kitchen should be loud, disciplined, and clean. The drifters here appeared quiet, lax, and dirty. It was so dirty that Maran could scrub the place all day and night for a month and still not have it clean.

  Moving around the kitchen, Maran found that its fundamental layout clearly remained that of a Loam kitchen. The cutting tables, although much abused, still retained their mosaic banding. The floors retained their mosaic tiling. Many stoves and ovens were still made of hard clay, although there were some newer and stranger looking ovens. Where the kitchen deviated from a Loam kitchen was in the utensils: here, everything was made of iron.

  The bakery was clearly of Ironmonger design. Meister Bochen sat in a very high chair, looking down upon his workers.

  “Good morning, Meister Bochen. Freifrau Quema told me to report to you.”

  The meister gave Maran an annoyed look. He clearly did not want a Loam in his kitchen. “If that’s what the Freifrau wants, then that’s what she wants. There’s no accounting for her. You see that oven over there? That oven is the right temperature for our bread. Go check all the ovens.”

  The Ironmonger conception of an oven was the most complicated monstrosity that Maran had ever seen. Each one was designed to bake an entire rack of bread trays. A clever system of fans, somehow powered by air currents, moved the air about. To preserve heat, each oven had a little door that allowed you to feel its temperature.

  “How much bread do you produce?” Maran asked the meister.

  “As much as we are told,” groused Bochen.

  To bake so much, the bakers needed a company of drifters making dough. They had huge kettles that were mixed via a chain-driven mechanism. The drifters sat on contraptions and peddled to make the mixer go. From there, the dough went to a table where a company of drifters kneaded it.

  Why didn’t they force the dough to rise? Maran knew the technique. It was easy. Maran stopped herself mid-thought. She had to remind herself that these were drifters, not Loam, and they were just ignorant. The White Lady taught the Loam the secrets of growing things, even trivial things like dough, and that's why Ironmongers needed so many of them.

  To keep themselves coordinated, the drifters sang. The verses told them how long to do each task. The rhythm told them when to throw and catch. Watching the process was like magic, for the whole table would stop kneading as a unit, do something without warning, such as pass or throw, then proceed again. Eventually they filled a rack, which was wheeled off to rise.

  Meister Bochen did not work. He used his own keen eye to misjudge when things needed to happen, then made his drifters react inappropriately. The process was correct, as it did produce bread, yet nothing about it was right. The meister had no understanding of bread, forcing the drifters to produced a consistently bad loaf.

  After a long stint of work, the bakery paused for lunch, eating at their worktables. Bochem kept them silent. Finished their rest, they resumed their relentless pace. In the mid-afternoon, after supper, the bakery switched to making field rations. They put hearty cakes in the ovens, then lay down to sleep on the floor, letting the cakes bake long and hard as the ovens cooled.

  Having barely worked all day, Maran felt annoyed. Rather than rest, she walked home to tend her own garden. When that was done, she continued cleaning the house. Sometime later, she crawled into bed, needing to be awake in several hours.

  Maran reclined and closed her eyes, but she did not return to sleep. She still owed a knife to Arany, so she rose again and walked downstairs. Maran looked through Altyn’s cache of broken things, finding enough ceramic bits to make a durable knife.

  Finished with her little task, she dressed, then walked back to the forge. On the way, she walked by Arany’s wagon and dropped the knife there. By the time that Maran arrived at the kitchens, the drifters were stirring while Meister Bochen sat in misery, still drunk from some sort of gambling.

  Waiting for no order, Maran yanked the dustpan out of the first oven and got to work yanking out the coals.

  “What are you doing?” yelled Bochen, “Those take hours to warm up properly!”

  “I’m cleaning them, sir!” replied Maran.

  “I didn’t tell you to do that!”

  “Trust me, sir.”

  Maran now knew exactly how this bakery ran. She could pull apart and prepare each coal oven in enough time to bake each batch of bread. All she needed to do was prepare each oven before the bakers prepared each rack.

  Ignoring Bochen's accusations of idiocy, Maran got the coal burning correctly on the first try. Even as the first oven came up in temperature, Maran pulled apart the next one apart. Soon enough, Maran had the first stove at the correct temperature for the bread, but not the correct temperature according to Bochen.

  Bochen got off his chair and into her face. “I’m a meister, and I’m ordering you.”

  “I’m a cook, and I’m refusing. Order them, not me.”

  After meister saw the first batch of bread come out, looking and smelling perfect, he relented.

  For the third oven, Maran pulled the coal boy over and showed him what he should do. For the fourth oven, she made the boy do all the work. She made sure that the boy did it correctly, pointing out all the mistakes that she had seen him make the previous day.

  By the end of the day, Maran had every oven under firm control. The next morning when she came in, she sauntered rather than ran and Meister Bochen didn’t like this.

  “Can you knead bread?”

  “Of course I can, Meister.”

  “Then get to work.”

  Maran joined the kneading table. Avoiding all tricks, she decided to knead as a drifter.

  Before Maran knew it, it was night again. The drifters settled down to sleep and Maran walked home to tend her garden, harvesting what was ripe by lamplight.

  Two days later, Freifrau Quema showed up in the bakery. Meister Bochen waved her away. “I don’t need anything. We’re working fine here.”

  Quema said, “I told you that I would put the Loam here for a few days, then move her elsewhere. You were happy enough getting before.”

  “She’s a good worker.”

  “She lets you go off cock fighting, that what she does. I’m no fool. She also fixed all your production problems. Well, she’s going to fix more. Maran, follow me. We’re going to the roasting pits.”

  They wound their way through the kitchens until they came to the pits. On seeing Maran, the roasting meister stood and shooed them away. “I don’t want a Loam here. I’ve heard about them, damned cockroaches. What do you reckon?”

  “You will take her. That’s an order.”

  “When you got that cockroach in, I went to Strikke to get my facts straight. I’m a meister here. Meisters don’t have to obey orders if those would harm his workshop, even if the orders come from a Hadean. That Loam would harm my workshop. I refuse to take her.”

  Quema folded her arms. “So, Meister, tell me how Maran will harm your operation.”

  “She’s a Loam. That’s good enough.”

  “That is not sufficient, Meister Stur. You need a material objection. You must be able to demonstrate an actual harm.”

  “She can’t do the work. We have iron spits. Loam don’t use iron. They think it is unclean.”

  Quema turned to Maran. “Is this an issue?”

  Maran replied, “This whole place is unclean, ma’am, but I’m still here. I worked with the iron ovens. I can work with iron spits.”

  “Stur, she will use your equipment. Do you have any more objections?”

  Stur picked up a spit that was lying in the coals. One end glowed a dull red. Stur offered the hot end to Maran. “If you
take the spit, you can work for me.”

  Quema stiffened, moving to knock the spit aside.

  Maran moved faster. She grabbed the glowing iron with both hands, pulling the spit away from Stur, then held it steady while she counted to five. Years of callouses served her well. Maran then flipped the spit around, catching the cool end, and offered the glowing end back to Stur. “I have taken it. You may take it back.”

  The meister looked back at Maran with incredulity. He waved his hand, refusing to take the spit. “She may work here,” he conceded to Quema, then he walked away.

  With unmasked astonishment, Quema turned to Maran, “What was that?”

  Maran put down the iron rod, which felt angry and overwhelming to her dirt-sensitive fingers. “I’m a hearth tender and a cook, ma’am. My hands are hard.”

  “I haven’t seen anything like that outside of the smithies. Have your ever worked in a forge?”

  “All dwarves know fire, ma’am. It’s in our hearts.”

  “I see. I need a word with you. Follow me.”

  Freifrau Quema lead Maran back to her office, shutting the door. “Just between you and me, that was a good stunt. I was damned glad to see Stur get his comeuppance. But, before you get too smug in your own cleverness, you’d better know that Stur is relentless once he hates you. He knows the rules damned well, backward and forward, and he uses them like weapons. Be careful and obey him as much as you can. You can be sure that he’s looking for loopholes in the rules even as we speak.”

  Maran bowed her head. “My apologies, ma’am. That was excessive of me. I could have accepted more simply.”

  “Just don’t do stunts like that, even if Stur deserves it. You are dismissed.”

  By the time that Maran arrived back at the pits, Stur had returned. He pointed to a stool near the pits. “Sit there.” So Maran sat and did nothing. She watched others tend the fires. She watched others carve the meat. She watched others hammer the spits through the meat.