The Magic Mines of Asharim

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The Magic Mines of Asharim Page 7

by Pauline M. Ross


  “Drink,” was all he said.

  Then he settled himself in the winged armchair near the fireplace and sipped his own drink. He was a restful man in many ways, his silence infinitely preferable to me to any words. There was no recrimination, no anger, no sorrowful disappointment. All I read in him was friendly interest, with perhaps a hint of amusement. No trace of the intense dislike he’d previously felt towards me. Clearly he wasn’t bothered by my dalliance with Rufin.

  “Drink,” he said again.

  Obediently I hauled myself upright and reached for the glass. After one sip, I screwed my face up in distaste. So sweet, so horribly sticky and nasty. A flare of amusement in Petreon, although his expression was grave. If I had no skill to understand his mood and had only his outward demeanour to judge by, I’d have been worried about my future.

  I sipped again. Better. “Janna – is she badly hurt?”

  He shook his head. No trace of concern in him at all.

  We sat and drank. After a while, he refilled both our glasses, and we drank some more. It was horrid stuff, but it had the effect he obviously intended. I began to feel better. Lightheaded, but the despair receded somewhat.

  “I’ll have to make a report.”

  I jumped. The alcohol was making me distant, floating on a sea of disconnected thoughts, and the room had been silent for so long that his voice startled me.

  “What? Report? What report?”

  “To the Mine Office. Report the incident. No problem, though. Big crowd, feelings running high, extractor injured. Just an accident. No problem.”

  “Oh.”

  It was the longest speech I’d heard him make. It was rare enough for him to string two or three words together, but a whole succession of them was unprecedented.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  And he smiled. It was astonishing, but he looked ten years younger, at least. I wondered if my estimate of his age might be wildly inaccurate. The drink made me reckless.

  “How old are you?”

  He was still smiling, and there was a surge of amusement in him. “Thirty-three.”

  That accounted for the frequency of his attentions in the bedroom, then.

  “So Chendria is your older sister, then?”

  His face closed up again, and a wash of anger raced through him. I cursed myself for my stupidity. Just when he was more approachable, I had to spoil it by prying. It would be stupid to make an enemy of him.

  But then his face cleared, and he straightened his back, as if something had been settled. “Not my sister.”

  “Wait – she’s not your sister?” No wonder she liked him rather too well.

  He shook his head. “My nursemaid. When I was a boy. She was a slave in Mesanthia…”

  “That’s a lie!” I burst out before I could stop myself. “There are no slaves in Mesanthia. There are bonded servants...” So many people believed the slavery myth, but there hadn’t been slaves there since the Empire fell. I bit my lip. It was foolish of me to respond to his mistake. I was giving myself away.

  He shrugged. “Bonded servants – same thing.” I managed to keep silence this time. “My father bought her out of slavery – bondage. Brought her to Hurk Hranda. Freed a lot of slaves. Akk’ashara didn’t like it – drove him out of business. Lost everything. Chendria remembers. Badly treated. Flogged. Lot of scars.”

  “That’s why she doesn’t like me? Because of what the Akk’ashara did to her?”

  He nodded. Then he smiled and leaned forward. “I like you, though. It’s funny – fucking an Akk’ashara.” He giggled. The drink was having an effect on him too, and I detected a thread of desire now.

  I could see his point. If you hated the Akk’ashara, then having one of them as your bed warmer was an amusing proposition, a tiny piece of revenge. Yes, I could see how that would add spice to the business. Well, I didn’t care what he thought of me. I didn’t even mind acknowledging my heritage if it helped. He didn’t abuse me, and he came to my bed regularly enough to stop me jumping on any of the other men. It was fine.

  “Do you want to fuck an Akk’ashara now?”

  Lust flooded him. He grinned, and crossed the room in three strides.

  ~~~~~

  That wasn’t the end of the matter, of course. Two Rivers people are a superstitious lot, and some of the extractors decided I was a witch and wanted to put me on trial. Petreon wouldn’t agree to anything formal, but he allowed a few of them to interrogate me.

  I didn’t mind that. There was no need for me to tell them anything, and I imagined their questions would be easy to fend off. My only concern was that their emotions might overwhelm me again, but it was not as bad as I feared. There was simmering anger, but there was also curiosity and, to my surprise, excitement, too. I supposed almost any deviation from the usual routine was stimulating to them.

  Chendria was the leader, as expected. There were a couple of the younger extractors, and Dilla, and one of the carriers, a stolid woman in her thirties that I’d barely spoken to. Kijana was there, too, but I couldn’t tell from her mood whether she was on my side or not, since the stronger feelings from the others drowned out her milder response. Petreon sat to one side, and I was optimistic that he at least would support me.

  Had that been all, I would have been fine. But the extractors brought a secret weapon – a flicker apiece, each in its little glass jar, writhing and stretching, the pinpoints of colour winking in and out. They all seemed happy today, but my stomach still turned over at the sight of those glass jars sitting in a row on the long polished table. My revulsion was tinged with a deeper worry. They would know if I lied. I would have to be very careful.

  The first questions were easy. Was I a witch? Could I do magic? Did I have prophetic dreams? I could answer those confidently enough. But then the questions became harder to answer directly.

  “How did you do that to Janna?” Chendria’s eyes were slits of hatred.

  I licked my lips. “Do what to her?”

  “You tossed her through the air. How did you do that?”

  Stick to the truth. “I don’t know how anyone could do such a thing.”

  “Do you dare to deny it? We all saw it.”

  “I have no idea what happened out there.” That was no lie.

  “You could have killed her!” That was Dilla.

  “I was trying to get away. You were chasing after me, remember?”

  “Stop prevaricating!” Chendria again. “Tell the truth!”

  “She’s not lying, Mistress.” Kijana, definitely on my side. My spirits rose.

  “But she’s not answering the questions, either. She’s evil, Kijana, can’t you see that?”

  Kijana lifted her chin a little. “No. The flickers would know if she was, but they like her. They’re humming away.”

  One of the other extractors nodded.

  “Is it unusual for them to hum?” Petreon asked, with nothing other than friendly curiosity.

  “In the mine, sometimes,” Kijana said. “Towards the end of the cycle, maybe. But outside, once they’re in the jars? I’ve never heard that before. They’re usually sulky and miserable. As soon as Allandra came into the room, they all brightened up and started humming.”

  “What does that mean?” the carrier said.

  “It means she’s a witch!” Chendria said.

  Kijana lifted her shoulders. “Well, if she is, the flickers like witches.”

  After that, the interrogation degenerated into a vicious argument between Chendria and the extractors, and for the moment I was forgotten. I didn’t think Chendria would let the matter rest, though.

  ~~~~~

  Janna regained consciousness and continued to improve day by day, and Twisted Rock’s residents returned uneasily to their everyday concerns. I wasn’t forgiven, though, and the population split neatly into two camps: those who still treated me in a more or less friendly manner, and the much larger group of those who couldn’t bear the sight of me. I’d never had many friends
, but now there were almost none.

  Poor Rufin had a hard time of it. The women kept a close eye on him, trailing along wherever he went in case he was heading for a secret assignation with me. At table, he dared not talk to me, but he cast me longing glances whenever he looked up from his plate. I wished he had more backbone to him, for we’d done nothing wrong and we could have been together if only he’d had the guts to stand up to the extractors. It wasn’t his fault that Janna had fallen for him, and imagined him in love with her. Only an extraordinarily silly woman could be jealous over a man who serviced more than thirty others. Did she really think she was so special?

  My chores became lighter now, for Chendria couldn’t bring herself even to speak to me. One of the two old women gave me my orders every day and they were less vindictive than the Mistress. In public, Petreon continued to treat me exactly as before, but in private he was much friendlier. He regularly asked me to go to the library with him to translate some of the books, for his skills were limited. That was a pleasure for me, and the library’s books were more interesting than those at the shop.

  Kijana was one of the few people whose attitude to me never altered. She often sat with me at table, accompanied by two or three children, as always, and chatted away as if nothing had ever happened. Sometimes she sought me out in the afternoons, and wandered around the town with me. It helped to fill the time, now that Rufin’s company was denied me.

  One day we were exploring the store room of a drapery, just one young boy in our wake, admiring the bales of silks and tweeds, linens and worsteds.

  “Oh, look at the weave on this!” she said excitedly. “Helly, come and touch this. Isn’t it soft?” The boy stroked it without interest, then wandered off. “My mother used to make cloth just like this, although not in these bright colours.”

  “Your mother was a weaver?”

  She nodded. “When she died, my aunts took over the business, but they struggled. They didn’t have the same skill, so they had to take on piecework weavers to make the best cloth. When I came here…”

  Her voice wavered, and I didn’t press her to continue. As if by agreement, although not a word was said, we left the shop and moved next door. Glassware, this time, and very skilfully made, although of a plain style I’d not seen before. I was admiring a decanter, and wondering how the glassblower had managed to swirl threads of colour through the design, when Kijana burst out, “I was going to rescue them, you know.”

  I turned to her, puzzled.

  “My aunts. That was why I came here, to earn enough money to help them out. Not everyone here is escaping from their past.”

  “No, I suppose not. So when will you have enough saved?”

  Silence. “Allandra, hasn’t it occurred to you that I’m older than most extractors? Older than all of them, I suppose.”

  “I assumed you started later than most,” I said.

  “No, I was fifteen when I came here. I’ve been here almost twenty years.”

  “Oh. So your aunts…?”

  “They could be dead by now, for all I know. I’ve had no word. Yet here I stay.”

  “Don’t you want to go home?” I asked gently.

  “I will, in time. Two or three years more, perhaps, that’s all. But for now… I have to stay.”

  She tilted her head to one side and with her eyes indicated the boy, crawling in a corner to pull a huge box from under a shelf.

  “He’s my third,” she said. “The first time… that was an accident. But after that… you’d think I’d know better, wouldn’t you? But he’s the last, and when he’s gone…”

  She left the sentence unfinished, as if it didn’t need to be said, but for me, it did. “Gone?” I said stupidly.

  She raised her eyes to mine, wide with surprise at my ignorance, I suppose. Her voice was low. “They don’t last long, the children. Ten years, if they’re lucky. The bloom gets to them. As it does to adults, too, but we have more resistance.”

  “Why not send them away?” I said, appalled.

  “They fade away in no time, away from the mine. A moon or two, that’s all. Better here, with their mothers, for the little time they’ve got. But when Helly’s gone, I’ll be able to go home then. If the bloom doesn’t get me first.”

  ~~~~~

  Winter softened her grip on the mountains, and as the snows melted, earthquakes triggered avalanches that rumbled away in the distance. The hours of daylight grew longer, and everyone began to count the days until the first visit from the mulers.

  So when the bell set on a pole at the foot of the walls began clamouring one day, everyone raced to see who it could be. We were all grateful for the break from monotony and excited by the first harbinger of spring.

  “It will be a message rider,” Kijana said, as we joined the throng climbing the steps to the top of the wall. “Some urgent message for Petreon, I expect.”

  “It must be urgent indeed to bring anyone out with the snow still so thick,” I said.

  “Well, the mulers won’t be here until brightmoon, so what else could it be?”

  We all peered over the parapet, to see a single man on a stout mountain pony, its shaggy coat glistening with frost.

  “Hoy there!” he called. “Can I come up?”

  Petreon snorted at that, and ordered a small bucket lowered. “State your business in writing,” he shouted down.

  The poor man struggled with fur-lined gloves, and rummaged in saddle bags for the requisite equipment, but eventually he got a note written and secured in the bucket with a stone. Up it came, swinging round and about dizzyingly on the end of its rope.

  Petreon caught the bucket, and fished out the paper. He read it carefully, then tucked it into a pocket. “Cage,” he called to the carriers.

  Commandeering a cloak from someone, he was lowered slowly to the ground. The two men stood, heads together, for some time, the stranger doing most of the talking, Petreon shaking his head. Then he was lifted back up and the other man mounted his patient horse and rode slowly away.

  “What was that all about?” Chendria said to Petreon when he reached the top of the wall again.

  “Nothing.” And that was all he would say.

  But that night, as he was leaving my bed, he said, “Here. You’d better burn this.” He pulled a crumpled paper from his pocket.

  “This is what the rider gave you?”

  He grunted. “Looking for someone. Couldn’t help, though. No one of that name here.”

  With that he was gone, his footsteps clumping down the stairs, the latch on the front door clanking.

  I unfolded the paper and smoothed it out. It bore a single name: ‘Lady Flethyssanya Dre’allussina of Mesanthia’.

  I lit a candle and burned it to ash.

  There was no one of that name.

  8: The Thrower

  The rider was a bounty hunter, I supposed, and probably he had no special knowledge to bring him to Twisted Rock, but it meant someone was looking for me. I’d hoped they would think I was dead, but that was always a faint hope. Someone would surely have seen me leave. Now the hunt was on. My name had been left far behind, but I was distinctive enough in appearance that I would be remembered. If they traced me to the Mine Office, then I was lost, for it was a simple matter to check every mine. I wasn’t sure how many there were, but it couldn’t be more than thirty or so. By the end of the summer, I would surely be caught.

  But for now I was alive and hidden, and Petreon was protecting me. Why would he do that? The selfish wish to keep hold of his bed warmer, perhaps, or was there a rebellious thread in him that delighted in thwarting the authorities? Everyone at Twisted Rock – everyone in the mines, in fact – was an outsider in some way, and most had secrets to hide, so perhaps it was no more than an inclination for privacy, to be left alone. But while Petreon would keep my secret, Chendria would not. If she knew I was being pursued, she would give me up in a heartbeat.

  I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. There was no point in w
orrying about it, so I didn’t. What would happen would happen, and I’d had several moons – almost a full year, now – of freedom that I hadn’t expected and perhaps didn’t deserve. Twisted Rock was a strange place and it hadn’t been as quiet as I’d hoped, but I was content, for now. I did my work, I explored the town, I read obscure texts to Petreon, I did what was needful in bed, I kept out of Chendria’s way. The very dullness of the routine cocooned me.

  But if I was keeping myself out of trouble, there were still ways for trouble to come to me.

  Two days before brightmoon, we had another visitor, escorted by a couple of mulers. A thrower. I hadn’t expected that, but Kijana told me it wasn’t uncommon.

  “They like to choose the freshest flickers,” she said. “They’re easier to train, apparently. He’ll stay for a moon, to do his training here, then he’ll go back with the mulers next brightmoon.”

  We were standing on top of the wall, waiting for the thrower to be hoisted up in the cage, but Chendria found us. “What are you two doing here? Kijana, you’ll be needed at the sun room.” That was where the flickers in their glass jars were kept until it was time to hand them over to the mulers. Chendria turned her disdainful eyes on me. “As for you – go and prepare the guest house.”

  “Erm – the guest house?”

  “The empty one next to yours.”

  I tried to keep my expression blank with her, but she must have seen my surprise, for she laughed harshly. “What, did you think Petreon was all you had to take care of? No, you’ll have another one to whore for now.”

  “Good,” I said defiantly, putting a smile on my face. I didn’t mind either way, but I enjoyed the flash of annoyance crossing her face. Nothing I did affected the raging hatred she bore towards me, so I might as well amuse myself.

  There were three houses in the row Petreon and I occupied, but I’d never realised that the unused one was intended for guests. No one had ever mentioned it before, and I’d never even been inside it. It made sense, though. I knew that mine inspectors visited once a year, and it would be a convenient base for them to go through the accounts and stores records that Petreon kept in his own house.

 

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