It would never be a fair fight.
Falk suddenly straightened. “I recognized you right away, but now I remember where from. You're the guard who brought down my ship.”
“Your ship?” Garek lifted his eyebrows.
Falk waved his hand dismissively. “I've done nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe that ship for the last three months. It's mine.” He rubbed his hand over his face, and his shoulders slumped. “I don't have a chance against you, do I? You single-handedly brought down a sky raider craft. I actually wondered at the time if the town master would try to have you assassinated after that, because that kind of power . . .”
“He tried to woo me to his side, instead.” Garek hadn't thought of the possibility of an assassination attempt, but Falk would know more of the political double-dealings of the Council than he would. He was lucky the town master was more greedy for power than afraid.
“It obviously didn't work.” Falk gave a snort.
Garek folded his arms. “I need access to the ship. And I need to know everything you can tell me on how to fly it.”
Falk went still. “The ship?”
Garek held his gaze.
“It sounds like you want to fly it.” Falk rubbed the side of his head.
Opik, obviously tired of hanging around in the hallway, stuck his head into the kitchen. “That's exactly what the mad bastard is going to do.”
Chapter 10
“You're saying the ore went through skin and muscle and into the rock?” Quardi leaned in closer, and Taya nodded.
“Straight in.”
“What kind of ore is that hard, straight out of the ground? No tempering, no folding. The raw ore?”
“This might help.” Min appeared from the river, hair still damp, and fiddled with her sleeve. She pulled out a thin vein of ore, slightly thicker than a rug hook and the length of a finger joint.
The dizziness Taya felt before came back with a rush, and she lifted a hand to her head as the world flickered.
“Easy.” Kas put a cool hand on her forehead. “It takes a while. It won't always be this intense.”
“And you say you could manipulate the shards?” Quardi took the shadow ore from Min and turned it over in his hands.
Taya nodded. “Just the one properly. The others reacted, but then fell back down again. I didn't really know what I was doing. Was there something I did wrong?” She looked over at her brother, and he shrugged.
“I don't know. Garek calls the Change in the air. I call it in the earth. By their very nature, there is a lot to call of both those things. When the thing that calls the Change in you is in a much smaller quantity, perhaps what you see is a more precise, clearer view of what Garek and I do on a larger scale.”
“The way you can only call a thin line of soil since we arrived. Because there is only a tiny amount of the type of soil you call on Shadow compared to Barit.” Quardi glanced at Kas. He held the shadow ore to the light. “I wonder what you could do with this if I smelted it, Taya, while it was liquid . . .”
He stared at the piece, and there was a change in his face, a sudden dawning of enlightenment. “The Star-cursed bastards! Those mangy, flea-bitten, blood-thirsty Star-cursed bastards!”
“Keep it down,” Kas hissed as Pilar, Noor and a few others from Pan Nuk moved closer, and then found places for themselves around the fire.
“The Nordren.” Quardi waved the slender baton of ore as if conducting a band, and Taya could feel the tug as it waved in front of her. “I always knew they couldn't work metal like that with their hands. Superior skill my big hairy buttocks. I knew there was something else involved.”
“Quardi, what are you talking about?” Pilar leaned forward and tugged the ore from his grasp, and Taya felt an uncomfortable lurch.
“The Nordren and their very intricate, very highly-prized metalwork, would be my guess.” Kas spoke quietly. “You think they call the Change on iron?”
“I know it. I'll know for sure when I smelt this, and Taya sees what she can do with it. But yes. Those bastards have kept the secret well, I'll give them that.”
“But how?” Min's silk skirts rustled as she leaned forward to scoop a ladle of hot stew into her bowl. “Surely they can't have the only Changed who call iron? The Illy or the Kardanx would have it too.” She paused. “Well, not the Kardanx anymore. But I've never heard of calling the Change with iron. Only water, air and earth.”
That reminded Taya that she hadn't yet asked Min what Change she could call, but now was not the time.
“Simple. We can call it.” Quardi looked around at them. “When I was a lad, I was good in the forge. Helped my Da, and had the touch, even then. The Nordren came through, just a few of them, selling their wares, always with that snooty 'our metalwork is far superior' air about them, and I remember . . .” His eyes lost their focus, and he stared into the distance. “I remember them asking me to do a test, to see how good I was. I was determined to show them the Illy could work metal just as well as they could, and they were . . . relieved when I was finished. Like they didn't have to do something they didn't want to do.”
“They'd have killed you? If your skill was more than just skill, if you were calling the Change?” Taya's gaze snapped to his.
“Or kidnapped me.” Quardi nodded his head slowly. “The story that the Nordren steal babies in the dead of night might not be such a story, after all.”
“And how many of us come into continuous contact with metal, after all? The miners at the iron mines, perhaps, but that's it.” Pilar was nodding his head, too. “It must be a rare Change, or we'd know about it, but those few who might be able to draw the iron Change may never know it, just like Taya with the shadow ore. Unless they're exposed, like when they join the guards, of course, with the swords, and armor. But most of the guard are already Changed, calling something else.”
“The Iron Guard.” Kas lifted his head, and everyone stared at him.
“What?” Min put her bowl down with a thump. “What's the Iron Guard?”
“The scariest, deadliest guard in West Lathor,” Taya murmured. “I thought they called it the Iron Guard because of all the iron they wear. Not that I've ever seen them, just seen paintings and heard about them.”
“But wearing iron isn't the reason for their name at all.” Quardi leaned back, shocked. “Somehow, the liege of West Lathor knows about the iron Change. Has found enough Changed to create a guard. And all that iron covering them is simply . . .”
“Part of their arsenal.” Taya thought of what she could do covered in a suit of shadow ore, or with pieces of it, nicely sharpened, attached to her clothes and body. And shivered.
“Well, we're certainly uncovering a lot of Barit's secrets up here on Shadow.” Noor's low laugh brought them all back.
“It's finally being able to see the bigger picture.” Taya looked up to where Barit hung, low on the horizon, and couldn't help but grin. You could only be sad, angry and heartbroken so much of the time.
“The wood from the trees,” Pilar agreed.
“The fire from the sparks,” Quardi chimed in.
“The mountain from the rocks,” Kas said, deadpan.
“You are all very strange,” Min told them, her accent rich and thick, but she was laughing, too.
Taya didn't know how she knew, perhaps the inclusion of the water Change in the list Min had given earlier, but she guessed if Min had added her saying, it would have had something to do with water droplets and the ocean.
“I never bring strangers in with me. Certainly never at night.” Falk Pallica sat in the small area off his kitchen on one of the two creaky armchairs Garek would guess he'd saved from the tinker's cart. “They'll be immediately suspicious.”
“Do you ever need contractors? Carpenters or something like that?” Opik sat on the other chair, chewing on one of Falk's pies.
“I've been asking for a wooden frame that will allow me to lower myself on top of the craft, and view it from above, to see if I'm missing
something only visible from that angle.” Falk tapped his foot. “I can probably get you in if you have the right equipment, and look like you're there to actually build something like that.”
Garek spoke from his place at the window, looking down on the street. He hadn't forgotten that Falk had a friend somewhere about. “That won't be a problem. What time do you get in, usually?”
“I go in at nine because I work so late at night.”
“Well, you'll come with us now, and you can arrive at nine with us in tow.”
“Why must I come with you?” Falk threaded his fingers together and rested his hands on his stomach. “You don't want me trailing around after you, surely? I could meet you at the tower.”
Garek almost smiled. Falk was certainly optimistic, he'd give him that.
There was someone coming down the street, whistling as he strolled along. Garek recognized something about the man, but he was wrapped against the cool night with a cloak and Garek couldn't see his face, even when he looked up at the window where Garek lurked in the shadows.
Without a doubt, this was Falk's backup.
Garek turned and looked at Falk, and Falk sat straighter in his chair. “Let's go.” He was talking to Opik, but his eyes never left Falk. He saw the moment when the scientist decided to make a run for it, and let him take the first two flying steps from the chair. He called the Change, and slammed two columns of air into Falk from either side. It was the same as slapping someone on both ears, but a lot nastier, and Falk went down with a strange half-cry.
“I hope you haven't made him deaf.” Opik swallowed the last of the pie, and stood up.
“Me, too. It'll make it harder for him to hear my orders when I ask about the craft.” He toed Falk's limp form. “But I think he'll be all right. I've gotten better at judging these things.”
Opik grunted. “Good.”
Garek bent and took the strain as he lifted Falk over his shoulder. “We've got company. Falk's got a guard dog, and he's on his way up.”
Opik opened the front door and held it for him, a strange look on his face as Garek shifted Falk to a more comfortable position. “What do you want to do?”
“Go down a level, hide and then leave when he goes into Falk's place.”
Opik nodded and Garek followed him down to the second story. There was a nice blind spot down the passage, and no lighting, so they could stand in perfect darkness.
He heard the light, quick tread of a man who was fit and agile, waited for the sound to reach Falk's floor before moving out and down.
They slipped out the door, as much as you could slip, with a grown man over your shoulder, and started toward the Seventh Wedge at a jog. Falk's head bumped his back with every step.
“Hey! Stop!”
The shout came from the same window Garek had been leaning against less than five minutes before.
Garek couldn't help himself, he turned to look, and then swung back and sped up, following Opik into the darkness.
He knew who that had been. What he couldn't understand was how Aidan Hansard, from his Garamundo barracks, was involved with Falk Pallica. And why.
Chapter 11
Taya watched the transporter take off with the usual day shift, reluctant to turn back into the camp.
Kas and Quardi had managed to convince the guard that Pilar needed to spend the day at the mine, to see what machinery would be needed to separate the ore from the stone.
The sky raiders had some of the men and women working the mined ore, but picking at it with axes or slamming it with hammers was yielding a very slow return.
They put her forward as Quardi's helper in the forge while Pilar was away.
They would be watched, but Quardi seemed to think they could smelt the shadow ore, and she could try to manipulate it in its liquid form, without being noticed.
Quardi always had been mad.
It was why he and Garek fought so much.
Garek was quiet; a solid, strong presence who thought things through and considered his options before he made a move.
Quardi leapt into things without thinking, said things without censoring himself, and generally lived larger than life.
She sighed and turned back to face the camp. The night shift were eating a quick breakfast around the fire and washing themselves on the banks of the river.
She raised her hand in greeting to Liah, a friend from Pan Nuk, and began to weave her way through the tents to the forge.
Quardi had set it up close to the river so there was an easy supply of water.
The area around the forge looked like a slum tenement in Gara's Eighth Wedge there were so many clotheslines strung up on poles, bowed under the weight of wet clothes and sheets. Nothing dried easily here, the air was cold and damp, and the constant heat of the forge had a very useful side-benefit of drying laundry.
“There you are,” Quardi hailed her. The forge was one of the few solid buildings in the camp, made entirely from wood. It had three sides and a roof, and the heat coming from within delighted her. Since yesterday she had been cold to the bone, and not even her soft, warm bedding could chase away the shivers that wracked her.
She dodged dripping washing, and ignored the sky raider guard standing to one side, but she knew he was watching her.
“Here I am,” she said, and pulled on the thick leather apron Quardi handed her. He was sitting in the wheelchair he'd cobbled together from things the sky raiders had taken from Barit, and he gave her thick leather gloves and a scarf for her hair.
They worked in a steady rhythm, falling back into a pattern repeated many times in the last two years when Taya had helped him in his forge back in Pan Nuk.
She'd enjoyed the work, even though she was busy enough dying the levik wool that came from the village co-operative.
Everyone had a herd of leviks in Pan Nuk, although Eli and Harvi had the two biggest herds.
Had. They were all gone now.
She'd started dying the wool when Kas went to Gara and found a bale of colored wool fetched double the price of an undyed bale.
Her dark crimson-maroon was the most highly sought after, with the pale creamy yellow a close second.
She'd tried for months to replicate the blue of the scarf Kas had lied about buying for her. She wondered now if any of the presents she'd given him for Garek had ever been delivered.
He'd made three trips to Gara since Garek left, to negotiate the deals that kept Pan Nuk a prosperous little town. She'd given him a maroon tunic to protect Garek from the cold of winter, and a dark brown cloak of levik wool to match Garek's eyes. She'd imagined him wearing them, thinking of her, and the sudden realization that he may never have received them brought stinging tears to her eyes.
Working in the forge brought her too close to him. To the old days. Despite its relative comfort, she almost preferred the mine. At least there, she wasn't constantly reminded of what she'd lost.
A wind came up, snapping the sheets and clothes around them, and playing havoc with the fire of the forge.
“Come hold this up for me,” Quardi said, a thin, bendable sheet of wood in his hand. “I need the flame steady for what I'm doing.”
This was it. She could hear a tremor of excitement in Quardi's voice.
She took the shield from him, and he made her stand with her back to the guard, the wooden shield just below her chin, blocking Quardi completely from the guard's sight.
The heat of the fire wafted over her face and stung her cheeks.
Quardi drew the shadow ore from his sleeve and set it in a clean, small pot. “Let's hope its melting temperature is lower than my pot's,” he muttered, and left it, moving on to other work; tapping out a mold he'd made earlier. The guard shifted, but Taya couldn't concentrate on him any more.
So near to the ore, her heart was beating like it wanted to burst from her chest. Nausea burned her throat and she wondered if she could stand much longer on legs gone weak and soft.
Quardi had warned her that raw ore wa
s different to the iron he was smelting from the items the sky raiders brought him. They were already tempered, their impurities stripped out from when they were smelted the first time on Barit.
He didn't know what would strip the impurities from shadow ore, what the process was to get to the elemental metal.
This was an experiment in every sense.
Quardi came back and lifted the tiny pot with a long-handled clamp, swirled it a bit and tilted it to the light to get a better look. “Beautiful,” he breathed. He tilted it in her direction, keeping it low so that the guard could not see over the shield.
The melted ore glowed red hot. Taya could feel the pull of it, and when the shuffle of the robotic legs of the guard behind her shot a spike of fear through her, she used the emotion to fling the tiny liquid mass into the air.
She felt something, like water sifting through her fingers, and realized she'd left whatever impurities there had been at the bottom on the pot.
The purity of the molten ore sang to her.
Now she had to decide what would be useful to her.
Something sharp.
The guard shuffled again, and panic joined fear in her chest. A knife? She suddenly couldn't think of what kind would be best, and it didn't look as if there was enough ore for that, anyway.
The ore floated, startlingly cohesive. So full of possibilities. Too full. And yet, there was so little of it. She was paralyzed by indecision.
The slender shards of ore that had lain at her feet yesterday gave her an idea, and on a spurt of nervous energy she split the small ball up into ten thin, sharp needles. When the guard shuffled behind her again, she dumped them in the bucket of water beside the fire in a rush of panic.
Steam hissed up, and too scared to turn around, she fixed her gaze on Quardi. He'd put the small smelting pot behind him and was calmly filling a new, larger one with scrap--the iron tips of arrows, bucket handles, and a kettle he had smashed to bits.
The guard stepped even closer, close enough to look over the shield at what Quardi was doing, the corroded metal of his armor bumping her elbow.
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