The blue flames, p.2
The Blue Flames, page 2
“Don’t you dare!” Margaret shot back, her eyes suddenly aflame.
“Enough!” Delia rounded the pen with her fists clenched, fixing them both with a hard stare. “This will be the end of us if we let it. The end of all we’ve built! All we’ve fought for! Yes, we’ve been struck another dreadful blow. Lest you forget, my own husband has been cold in the ground for near five years now, but we carry on! We are the only hope for whoever may still be alive down there. We can’t fall apart now. Grieve! Rail at the heavens if you must! But do not turn and tear at one another.”
Evering hung his head. The fire cooled in Margaret’s eyes. Martin sank down onto a barrel, looking as though he might be sick.
“We have to do something,” he said. “Waiting for a sign or a signal is a waste of precious time. They don’t have their spyglasses. They don’t have another Drifter. What are we expecting? Letters in the snow? Carrier pigeons?”
Delia rested a hand on her hip. “It’s hard to plan a course of action when we have no idea who captured them or where they were taken. They could be days away or only a few miles.”
“What about Chester?” Margaret said. “He’s got Drifter Two. Couldn’t we get a message to him somehow? Surely he’s our best chance.”
“If he hadn’t left us in the manner he did, perhaps,” Delia answered. “But by all accounts, he wants nothing to do with us anymore.”
“Better for him that way,” Martin growled. “I’m liable to knock his head against a tree if I ever see him again. I think it’s clear what we do. Go back to Mastmarner. Get help from the one ally we have left.”
Delia nodded. “I’ve had the same thought. But it’s sure to be dangerous. They’ve locked the place down tighter than a bank vault since our last visit. It’s practically a prison now.”
“Delia, anything we do is going to be dangerous. But it’s better than doing nothing at all. Another day of this and I swear I will run mad.”
There was a marked note of anguish in his voice. The elder woman folded her arms as she considered the matter. After a long moment of silence, she met his eyes again. “I dare not show my face inside that place a second time, but I’ll help pilot the Drifter down and back again. Will you go with me?”
Evering and Margaret couldn’t help but glance at Martin’s face. It had been six years since the one-armed man had set foot on solid ground below, so great was his fear of encountering another Spektor. He went ashen at her request, opened his mouth to speak, but soon closed it again.
“I will,” Margaret said. “I’ll go.”
Delia and Martin looked at her in surprise.
“Yeah.” Evering nodded. “She did good with Simon the last time.”
A pang of disquiet creased Margaret’s brow but she said nothing more. Delia nodded in agreement. Martin’s face flushed with embarrassment.
“Can you start the propellers, Evering?” Delia asked. “And keep them working until we can anchor again?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I guess I could try.”
“Trying is good. Then all we really need to worry about is navigation. Martin, you’ve studied the maps with Caradoc before. Can you handle that?”
He nodded, still too ashamed to speak.
Delia wiped a hand across her brow. “Margaret and I will do a test run in the Drifter. Make sure we can handle it with just the two of us. Perhaps do one more sweep over Harroway before we leave. Maybe we’ll see something we missed.” She shifted her gaze to Margaret. “Stay out of the kitchen for now. You can start helping Evering down in the pipeworks.”
Without waiting for a reply, the elder woman turned, strode into her house, and shut the door behind her.
A pile of used cheesecloths lay heaped on the counter in the middle of the dairy room. Delia dropped them into the sink and began working the handle of the pump with vigorous energy. Just as the water started to flow, she noticed a pair of blue leather gloves lying atop a nearby stool. They were Jeremy’s. He was always forgetting them—so often that she’d made up her mind to sew them into his coat sleeves when she had a spare moment. Abandoning the sink pump, she swept them up and made for the front door, intent on returning them.
She got as far as the hallway, then buckled to the floor before she could catch herself. Her breath came in short gasps as she fought for composure, holding the gloves tight to her breast. She wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t. She had to carry on.
“God,” she said in a choked whisper. “God.”
It was the first time she had prayed in nine years.
Chapter 3
Runaway
Anthony Revore felt himself beginning to wake. His eyelids were heavy, unable to open yet, which meant he couldn’t escape the relentless stare of the gold mark etched into the back of them. It was the first thing he saw every morning and the last thing every night, but he’d found that if he concentrated on something else—a thought, a sound, a memory—he was usually able to distract himself from the mark’s unnerving attention.
He focused on sound. The wind whistled in fierce gusts, though its tone was muffled, and he guessed he was in a building of some kind, the timbers of which creaked under the force of the weather. Somewhere to his right, voices shouted in the distance. The dull noise of clanking metal sounded in rhythm with their calls. A horse neighed even further off to his left. He raised his hand and rubbed at his eyes.
Harroway. That was the last thing he remembered. They had all been in Harroway. And then . . . then the Spektors had come. But there’d been a celebration afterwards. People dancing and laughing and singing, and an endless flow of food and wine—oh. The wine. They had all drunk the wine, and then fallen one by one on the road leading out of the mountains. He rubbed his entire forearm across his eyes, desperate now for sight. It took effort, but at last he lifted his lids and blinked through the blurriness.
He was in a long, low wooden cabin, hastily built as evidenced by its rough-hewn planks and warped floor. Ice sparkled at the edges of the windows. A pitiable fire clung to life in a little wood stove nearby. Two rows of small beds were stacked close to one another down the length of the room, about twenty altogether. A blanket was heaped on the floor next to him. He was wearing his father’s old coat, but the cold was so invasive he was eager to take whatever extra warmth he could find.
He grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders, groaning as he did so. His back ached, and there were bruises on his arms. His hand went to his belt. Last he could remember, there’d been a bag of silver pieces tied there, but it was gone now. As he attempted to rise from the cold floor, the world began to spin, and he was suddenly aware of a dull headache knocking against the back of his eyes. He sat down again.
The door creaked open and a man entered the room, bringing a small whirlwind of snowflakes in behind him before he shut it again.
“Ah. Awake now, eh?”
His voice was gentle, but his appearance spoke to the contrary. He was covered in animal pelts, from his bearskin cloak to his goat hide boots. He gripped a tall, thick staff, and there was snow in his unkempt hair and beard. Ink scrambled back to the corner of the room.
“Now then, now then,” the man said. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to sit.”
He went to a chair a few steps away from the door, eased into it, and leaned his staff against the stove. Ink could see from his face and hands that he was rather lean and lanky, but his trappings made him appear more than twice his normal size.
“What’s your name?”
The boy thought of answering with a smart remark but found he was too anxious to bother with the effort.
“Ink.”
The man nodded. “Ink. I’m called Fetch. I take care of all the youngsters here in camp, and a few other odd jobs besides. This lodge here, they call it ‘Lost and Found.’ It’s where you’ll be sleeping. There’s a yellow flag up top so you can’t mistake it for any of the others.”
“Camp? Whatcha mean, ‘camp’?”
“Camp Twenty-Three. It’s what they call an open-pit mine. No dark tunnels and all that but no less dangerous. Best you keep that in mind. Silver is mostly what we get here, but some lead ore and copper, too. You’re to work here until what time the judge says you’re released.”
“Judge?” It was both a dismayed exclamation and an urgent question.
“Aye, lad. Don’t you remember? They brought you in this morning. Said you’d had a conviction for running away from the orphanage one too many times. A lot of your kind are here, other runaway orphans and troublemakers too young to throw into prison.”
Ink rose to his feet, defying the dizziness that lingered in his head. “This is a mistake. I ain’t done nothing wrong. I was in Harroway. With the others. We met with the mayor! We got rid of the Spektors! They threw us a great big party for it! Didn’t you hear what happened?”
Fetch wrinkled his brow. His gaze remained fixed on the corner where Ink had been sitting a moment ago. Moving closer, Ink noticed there was something wrong with his eyes. They were covered with a thin lining of milky-white film. Ink waved his hand in front of him. The man didn’t even blink.
“Harroway’s near twenty miles away,” Fetch answered. “Afraid we don’t get much news out of there, ‘cept when a new load of prisoners is arriving.”
Ink clutched the blanket tighter around himself. He’d been told Harroway’s mines were populated almost entirely with prisoners, all willing to exchange their cells for hard labor in the treacherous Kurna Mountains. That made his situation considerably worse.
“Where’s the others?” Ink said. “Are they here, too? I want to see ‘em.”
“Others?”
“My friends! The people I was with!”
“They brought you in alone. Weren’t no others.”
“Who brought me in?”
“Two men from the court, presumably. You were asleep in the back of a wagon when you came through the gate. They said you’d had something bad to eat and were feeling a bit ill.”
“That’s a lie!” Ink cried. “They put something in the wine! They got what they wanted, then double-crossed us quick as they could turn ‘round! I shouldn’t be here! And I ain’t no orphan, neither!”
“Calm yourself, Mr. Ink. No use getting worked up. All the youngsters have the same idea about it being a terrible mistake, but you’ll only make it harder on yourself if you don’t accept things as they are.”
Ink lunged for the door. Quick as lightning, Fetch shot to his feet and whipped his staff down in front of the boy, barring his way. Ink fell back, stunned. Fetch’s eyes were still fixed on the corner of the room.
“I don’t blame you for trying it,” he said, maintaining his even-tempered tone, “but I’d never have lived this long without having my ways of coping. Besides, if I don’t stop you, the dogs or the lightning bolts running through the fence will.”
The door opened behind him. A large man in a bowler hat stood on the threshold.
“Trouble here, Fetch?”
Fetch lowered his staff. “No, Mr. Hendry. Just catching the boy up on his situation.”
The man squinted at Ink through hard, beady eyes. “You see that piece of cowhide hanging near the window, boy?”
Ink glanced over. A three-foot band of leather hung on a nail near the farthest window-pane. It was as thick as a grown man’s hand.
“That there’s the strap,” the man continued. “You don’t want to feel its bite, you do as Mr. Fetch says. Understand me?”
Ink nodded. A few feet behind Mr. Hendry, a line of children filed past, each carrying a bucket and a small shovel. Though they walked with their shoulders hunched and heads bowed against the icy wind, he could see their soot-streaked faces were all drawn with gloom.
Mr. Hendry turned his head and spat a glob of brown phlegm into the snow, all the while keeping his eyes on Ink. “Scraggly thing, he is. Too small to drive the horses. Too thin for the bucket crew. Best he go to feed the smelters. Take him over and get him started as soon as he’s had his porridge. He’ll have to sleep on the floor another day or two, but Dunny’s not likely to last much longer and he can take his bed then. He gives you any trouble, send him to me.”
“Yes, Mr. Hendry,” Fetch said.
Another flurry of snowflakes swirled into the room as the large man turned and walked away. Fetch went to a chest of drawers and pulled out a threadbare cloak.
“Here. It’s a bit thin, but the work will keep you warm enough. You’ll see.”
“I’m already wearing a coat. Not the highest quality, but better than that old rag.”
“Ah. Well, best you keep it on all the time, then. Even in bed. Otherwise it’ll get snatched in the middle of the night. You got a handkerchief?”
Ink stuck his hands into his pockets. There was nothing in them but the slip of paper he’d torn out of The Compendium of Missing Persons.
“Afraid not.”
Fetch reached into his own pocket. “Here. Take mine. It’s clean, I promise. You’ll need to cover your nose and mouth while you’re working. The smelters kick out a lot of muck but they’re also near the slag heaps, and those can make people awful sick. Watch out for water, too. The pit floods all too easy when it rains. And sometimes they’ll accidentally open up a gusher—scalding hot water coming up from underground through holes and cracks.”
Ink took the handkerchief with a frown. “What’s wrong with Dunny?”
Fetch clasped his hands around his staff. “He, uh, slops out the latrine pit. Caught something a few days back and now he can’t keep any food down. Happens to a lot of people who work out there.” He sighed. “Look, there’s not much I can do for them, but if you carry out your duties, get along with the others, and don’t make no trouble, I’ll make sure you get through this all right. Fair enough?”
Ink had survived tough situations before, but he had a feeling this was going to be different. It wouldn’t be like dodging slaps at the orphanage, or going cold and hungry while crossing the North Country, or doing chores on a floating village filled with fugitives. This was prison labor in the frozen mountains, and it was anything but fair.
When he didn’t answer, Fetch laid a hand on his shoulder and urged him gently towards the door. “Come on. Let’s go and get your porridge.”
Chapter 4
Lunatic
John Spindler trudged through the streets of Harburg with the newest police report tucked into his coat pocket. It was just after sunrise, and the fourth day in a row of winter’s first heavy snowfall. The flakes were now so large and so numerous it wasn’t long before his hat was dampened nearly all the way through. The streets were empty, save for a shopkeeper shoveling the pavement in front of his store. Spindler kept his eyes to the ground as he passed. He was in no mood to tip his hat or return any greetings.
It had only been a week since he’d awoken in a strange carriage and found himself being dumped at a wayside inn by a driver who wouldn’t speak to him. Of course, it didn’t take much to work out what had happened. He’d gotten too close. Dug too deep. From the moment he’d entered the Tinderbox Café he had not been welcome. The sneers and hard stares had made that clear, not to mention the repeated attempts to steer him away from the place. It should have come as no shock that he’d blacked out mere minutes after setting foot in the underground séance chamber. They’d removed him like a troublesome pest in a garden. Or like a child sent to bed while the grownups carried on downstairs.
He felt foolish and insignificant. Naturally, being a newspaperman, the experience had also fueled his curiosity, but he would have to ferret out the truth by a different route. One more misstep, one more rash mistake, and he might not wake up again. At least he had done his duty in reporting the incident to both Lady Seherene and Deputy Commissioner Coram. But until he heard back from them and received further instruction, he could do nothing more than try to replenish his dwindled finances and nurse his wounded pride.
A blast of icy wind cut down the street, prompting him to step into an alleyway to avoid its bite. His mood grew even more sour as he navigated the back roads to his office. He wouldn’t sell many papers in this weather. He thought about having young Morgan Swipson go door-to-door to make the sales directly, but it wasn’t likely to be much more effective. Purses were always held tighter during winter in the North Country, and the wares he had to offer were certainly not at the top of anyone’s shopping list. He needed a change of fortune, and soon.
A little farther on, where the shops began to thin near the edge of town, he heard a noise that made him stop in his tracks. He listened for a moment, then hurried to the outer road. There, in the shadow of the old abattoir, two men were beating another with their fists and feet, cursing him as he writhed on the ground trying to shield his face. A wagon was lodged in a snowdrift nearby, hitched to two thin horses. Spindler was already rushing towards them before he realized he had no weapons with which to stop the attackers, both larger than he.
“Hey!” he cried. “What the devil are you doing?”
The men got in a few more blows before turning to Spindler, their fists still clenched.
“Who are you?” one of them barked. A gold tooth gleamed beneath his curled lip.
“Never mind who I am! Who is this man? And what’s he done to deserve all this?”
The beaten man lay sprawled on his side, clutching his ribs. Blood poured from his nose.
The second attacker, a stocky man wearing a tweed cap, spat on the ground before answering. “He’s just a lunatic. We’re taking him to the asylum in Billington. Bleeder got his bonds loose just as our wagon got stuck.”
Spindler’s face flushed with anger. “And this is how you treat a man in his state? Like a rabid animal?”
“That’s what he is,” the other man replied.
