by Tish Thawer
Lawrence didn’t seem to find anything strange about this conversation. And I rather admired Betsy’s penchant for subtlety.
Charlotte nodded. “Of course. That’s a wonderful idea. Come, dear.”
We made our way into the back of the shop. Charlotte went straight for the armoire that was far more than it seemed. She opened the front of the massive piece, and at first glance, it appeared to hold nothing but sweaters and neatly folded trousers. When she pulled a hidden leather lever beneath the third shelf, a second layer opened, one that was partially sunken in the wall. Here were some of my stranger inventions: mechanical armor, swords that could be folded into their own selves, and ammunition that I’d not yet gained the confidence to test.
Charlotte pulled a pair of vambraces off one peg. She handed me the thicker one, and wrapped the other around her forearm. The front of the leather had what appeared to be random gears stuck to it, with a large gap in the center. But they weren’t random—everything had a purpose. I handed her one of the cartridges from the inside of the right hand door, which she snapped into the opening on her vambrace. I did the same with mine, enjoying the satisfying click when everything locked together. I designed them for utility, and there were several different attachments we could use with the armor. The choice of shields seemed prudent for the day, but I also took the time to hand Charlotte a dark gray metallic cartridge. It was expandable, and held small bolts almost like a crossbow. In one accessory, we now had something to defend ourselves, and attack if needed.
Once we’d gathered up all we planned to take, I hefted the pack onto my back. It was unlikely anyone would steal the rudimentary mining equipment we’d left in the old caves, but I didn’t want to hike all the way up there only to find we had nothing to help extract the ore.
I heard Theodore complimenting our patron’s choice of puzzle box as we made our way out the back door. I exchanged a smile with Charlotte.
“He has some sense about him,” Charlotte said as the door snapped closed behind us. “That will be useful to you.”
“He’s already quite useful,” I said.
“I mean more useful than ruining your batches of moonshine, and trying to blow himself up.”
“Fair point.”
We made our way across town and followed the stream for a while. I waited until the sounds of the hammers, crashing boards, and what bustle there was in the town turned to nothing but a whisper.
“You’re right,” I said.
“About Betsy?” Charlotte asked.
I nodded.
“Of course I was.” Charlotte lowered her voice. “What else could she be?”
“You mean your family didn’t pass down ancient fae wards from generation to generation? I thought that was a regular dinner conversation for most families.”
Charlotte blew out an exasperated breath. “At least you can admit when you’re wrong. Watching Theodore twist his words up and ignore logic altogether, just so he doesn’t have to admit he was wrong, is truly a spectacle.”
“I know,” I said. “But he means well.”
We followed one of the rough mountain trails close to where the stills were at. Or at least close to where the path to the stills branched off. This time we continued on, climbing higher, making our way toward the Great Falls.
The sound of the falls crept up on us. You could hear them all the way from the town if you listened close enough and the birds were quiet enough, but it was different in the woods. It was always there, a little rush, the echoes of the stream winding through ancient rock. But the sound grew as we rounded a boulder, and the mountain split open before us.
Water crashed down into the pool at our feet, sending a fine mist into the air. It was a place you didn’t want to be in the chilly months. My eyes trailed up the slope, half taking in the beauty, and half looking for Driscoll.
Chapter 9
“Let’s get down there, then,” Charlotte said.
I led the way off what to the naked eye looked like a ledge, but below the rounded face of a rock was a fractured stone that worked very much like an ill-formed staircase. When I first heard about the cave, or more like when I first stumbled onto it, I hadn’t realized just how valuable it was. Some folks would be taken with the fancy gemstones and a few veins of precious metals found deeper in the cave system, but that’s not why I was here. I was here for the strange ore. I’d tried crafting the aether vessels from gold and silver, copper and bronze, but they all failed. Some alloys lasted longer than others, but most couldn’t survive the heat.
Aether itself didn’t give off much heat, if any, but when used in devices like we concocted for the wards, it did. It wasn’t what I thought of as natural heat, but one able to melt metal as it was while leaving flesh and wood untouched. I found it peculiar enough that I tried building a vessel out of wood, but the aether would seep through and eventually escape no matter how much I polished and sealed the outer layers. Only the ore in these caves mixed with iron seemed able to hold it. I only wished I knew what it was.
Down in the pool at the base of the falls waited boulders the size of horses. They sat in a pattern, spiraling out from the center of the falls. It was an ill-defined pattern, and I supposed many folks might not even consider it a pattern at all, but I’d spent enough time in the woods and streams to know that it wasn’t natural.
“Something’s above us,” Charlotte said. She followed these words up with a small laugh, and her nonchalant approach sent a bolt of adrenaline down my back. It was a simple way to throw your enemy off, to not let on you knew they were there.
“Get in the cave,” I said.
“I plan to,” Charlotte said. “Of course, I have an old fool in front of me slowing me down.”
I gave her a tight smile. We raised our voices, shouting to each other with the intent of seeming oblivious to whoever was watching. But we weren’t oblivious. I’d seen the shadow now, near the top of the waterfall.
I waited until we rounded the back of one of the large boulders, which hid us from the eyes above. And I hissed, “Run!”
Sprinting across wet stone was a good way to break your body, but here it was even riskier. You get your foot caught in the wrong place, and the rivers swell, the waters would swallow you whole. Of course, the more obvious threat today was a bit more immediate.
Our boots splashed in puddles and echoed around the sunken pool. We’d almost reached the edge of the waterfall when I saw the shadow move above us. It was either a madman flinging himself to his death, or a faerie gifted with flight.
“Dive!” Charlotte shouted.
Next thing I knew, she’d pushed me forward. As I tumbled into the shadowed cave entrance, I saw the sword flicker through the waters above my head. Charlotte pulled the lever on the side of her vambrace, and a shield exploded out from the sides. She used it to batter away the sword before diving over me. Charlotte grabbed my wrist and yanked me toward the shadowy cavern. It was a small opening, but I’d sunken enough iron into the entrance to deter most fae. Nothing tried to follow us past the waterfall. The falls parted, and a snarling face appeared with water running down its ears and nose. Driscoll eyed the entrance to the cave, then flung himself back through the waterfall.
“He really doesn’t like us much,” Charlotte said.
I barked out a laugh. “Come on.”
The lanterns I’d left inside the cave several months before waited on a rickety wooden table. I remembered bringing Theodore here once and how he worried the lanterns wouldn’t light with so much moisture in the air. That was before I showed him the fuel wrapped in the oiled leather pouches. I dropped two jagged white chunks into the lantern base and added a little water. We waited a few seconds before striking flint across the face of the lantern. The gas caught fire. The reflectors hooked on the little lanterns focused the light and pierced the shadows. Charlotte slid the mount of a lantern into her vest, and we made our way into the narrow section of the cave.
If I’d been much larger, th
e cave would’ve been impassable. As it was, the lantern on my own vest scraped against one wall while my shoulder blades scraped against the other. The passage was wider near the floor. I supposed I could’ve gone through on my stomach, but the cave had a tendency to take on water. And that seemed like a stupid way to die.
“I think I need to feed you less bread,” Charlotte said. “Or we’ll have to come up here and pry you out of this cave one day.”
I didn’t argue. She was right.
We only spent a few minutes in the narrows before the cave mercifully opened wide. It wasn’t long before we could walk shoulder to shoulder without bumping into each other or the side of the cave. The glow of the lantern light glinted on some dusty metal in the distance.
“Looks like the equipment is still here,” I said.
“Really, Gregory, who is going to climb into this mess and figure out how to drag that equipment out of here?”
“There are other passages through here. You never know if someone will find an easier way. We’ve dug a fairly deep channel into this mountain now.” I shined my light at the timbers supporting the entrance to the tunnel I’d carved out over the past year.
The tunnel sloped downward and our conversation trailed off. Keeping our footing required more effort than at the relatively flat entrance to the cave. Theodore and I had carved wide rough steps into the steeper parts of the slope while leaving a smooth, almost ramp-like expanse to our right. It was down that ramp we let the heavier tools slide.
“Why don’t you just leave all these at the bottom of the ramp?” Charlotte asked.
“Because if there’s a cave-in, we’ll lose all of our tools. It would be bad enough to lose the effort of digging this place out. Losing all our gear as well would take much longer to replace.”
It wasn’t long to the bottom of the curved tunnel, but it always felt significantly longer than it was. It was more damp than the mine above us had been. Part of it was cool and dry further in, until we finally reached the wall we’d been mining ore from.
While we didn’t leave much equipment in the mine, we did leave the boilers at the bottom of the shaft. When they were filled with water, they were far too heavy to move. There was just enough of a trickle running down the ceiling that I was able to set up a sluice to refill them while we were out. Now one of them was overflowing, and I was glad I’d added an overflow release to keep the fuel below dry.
Charlotte lit the fire under the boilers while I studied the ore lodged in the wall. “I think we can stay on this vein that Theodore and I started.” I ran my finger along a reflective gray streak embedded in the wall.
“You’ve gone deeper than I thought you would,” Charlotte said. She pointed at the wooden support beams above me. “You’re really stretching this out. You’re going to need to get more lumber down here, and I don’t think we can afford to hire anyone right now.”
“Quite sure we can convince Betsy’s friend to help us again. I never saw the man last time, and I suspect there’s a very good reason for that.”
“Fae?”
“That would be my suspicion.”
Charlotte nodded. “It makes sense. Who else could have gotten timber in without being seen? Or at least without piquing someone’s curiosity or leaving an obvious trail through the woods?”
I took a deep breath and turned back toward Charlotte. “The boilers ready?”
“Almost. The smaller one. Larger won’t be ready for some time.”
A few minutes later, the first hiss of steam punched through the release valve of the smaller boiler. I slid one end of the braided hose over the nearest valve and ratcheted a clamp down to hold it in place. Charlotte picked up the bigger end. She took what looked like deformed pickax heads out of the bag we’d dragged down and started attaching them to a belt that ran around the digger. Another minute and we were ready to start.
The fires turned the room into something more like a hot spring. What had been relatively dry had now been saturated by the steam emanating from the boilers.
“Ready?” I asked.
Charlotte pulled a pair of goggles down over her face and rolled out the leather mask hanging beneath them. It would keep the worst of the debris away from her face, and protect her lungs all at once. She nodded.
I opened the valve on the boiler, and the hose spasmed. The braid expanded and fattened as the superheated steam rushed down. A cloud of white spewed from the side when Charlotte threw the lever.
The handheld digger roared to life, and Charlotte leaned into it, placing it against the wall where I’d indicated the vein of the gray ore.
What had been a quiet cave with nothing more than the hiss of fires became a deafening cacophony of machinery, broken stone, and crumbling ore. I grinned as I watched Charlotte work. She wielded the digger with more familiarity and ease than Theodore ever could. When the larger chunks of ore fell from the wall, I checked the clumps closer to me so I could scoop them up and drop them into a wheeled cart.
We stayed at it for another fifteen or twenty minutes before the digger clanged against something hard enough and deep enough to stop the sleeve of spinning pickax blades.
“Whoa!” I shouted.
Charlotte shut the valve, and the digger wound to a stop, the steam spraying from the side of the machine. I closed the valve on the boiler.
“What was that?” Charlotte asked.
“Looks like a large deposit of ore,” I said, leaning in closer and adjusting my lamp so I could see the dented metal in the light.
“I don’t think we’re getting that out with the digger.”
“I don’t know if we’re ever getting that out,” I said. “And certainly not today.”
Charlotte looked down at the ore loaded up in the small wheeled cart. “You think it’s enough?”
I nodded. “Let’s get back to the shop.”
“Let’s see if that wagon will float first,” Charlotte said.
“I’m a little worried about that,” I said with a nod. “This is a lot more ore, but I can’t tell exactly how much metal is in each rock.” I cursed. “I should’ve just built the pulverizer up here like I’d planned to.”
“Of course. That would’ve been so subtle. I’m sure no one would’ve noticed you hauling all that equipment through the woods.”
“Yes . . . Well . . .”
“We can load some of it into the packs. Just to be safe,” Charlotte said.
“There’s too much equipment in the packs,” I said.
“Well,” Charlotte said, “let’s leave some of it here. At the bottom of the mine. It’s not likely to flood this week, and no one’s going to find it.”
Charlotte made a lot of sense. She tended to be more levelheaded when I got frustrated and worried that one of my plans wasn’t working out exactly as it should have.
I nodded. “You’re right. We have to keep Driscoll away. Let’s go.”
Chapter 10
We propped the digger up so the blades wouldn’t be resting on the ground. It may have been an unnecessary precaution considering the steel they’d been forged from, but I wasn’t so sure about the mount of the blade itself.
“We used it to dig ore out of a rock wall,” Charlotte said. “I’m sure it can survive sitting on the ground.”
“Probably,” I said, “but I’d rather not take the chance.”
We finished clearing out the leather sacks we used for hiking and started dragging the wagon back up the ramp. The harness I had fastened around my shoulders and waist had actually been one of Theodore’s ideas. Before that, we’d been dragging the wagon by hand, and every trip had been exhausting. I wouldn’t say that hauling a load of ore was easy, but a great deal of strain had certainly been lifted by Theodore’s addition.
“The question now,” I said, taking a deep breath as we reached the top of the mine once more, “is whether or not Driscoll is waiting for us.”
“Check your armor,” Charlotte said. “We don’t want to be caught unprepared
.”
I nodded and went about doing just that.
We reached the entrance to the mine, and I frowned at the overarching barrier of iron. I silently hoped we wouldn’t need our armor, and stepped outside.
I dragged the wagon deeper into the waterfall, until we were nearly out the other side. This was the best place I’d found to lower the wagon into the waters. I undid the harness and pulled one of the sacks of ore onto my back. It was heavy, but not unbearably so. Charlotte did the same. Once we had a good length of rope tied to the edge of the wagon, Charlotte started back along the ridge. I slowly let the wagon slide into the waters, grinding my teeth as the corner went under, and blowing out a breath when the ballast tanks dipped for only a moment, keeping the wagon afloat. It vanished through the edge of the falls as Charlotte pulled it toward the other side.
I yanked the harmonica pistol out of my jacket and removed the ammunition from my vest. The two pieces slid together with a click, and I hurried around the bank to meet Charlotte.
She dragged the wagon through the water, maneuvering around boulders and small whirlpools until she finally reached the sloping bank we could use as a ramp on the other side.
“You have it?” I asked.
The look on her face told me that she had it, and that I was, in fact, an idiot for asking. Old habits, I supposed. You work with an apprentice long enough, and you just assume everyone needs a little help.
Charlotte had the wagon out of the water before she let out a long sigh. She slid the pack off her back and let the stone-filled leather crack down onto the small pile of ore. I did the same, awkwardly shifting the straps around my harmonica pistol.
“Did you see something?” Charlotte asked, eyeing the pistol.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to fumble with it if I do see something. Just wanted to be ready.”
Charlotte tapped the dark gray box on her vambrace. It was her way of telling me she agreed, without actually telling me she agreed.