The Reach Between Worlds (The Arclight Saga, Book 1) (11 page)

The Downings

Taro woke before the sun rose and left while Nima was still asleep. Crissom Foundry wasn’t hard to miss. With fifty smokestacks, and a layout that spanned two miles, it was a veritable city within a city. Taro wandered in like a stray cat, passing huge caravans hauling plates of steel. The heat coming from the foundry was tremendous, and vast plumes of steam rose like an unending white cloud.

Taro tried to flag down someone who could help him, but had to grab someone by the arm just to get them to listen.

“I’m looking for the overseer,” he said politely.

The worker shook him off and pointed a thumb to a gruff man standing beside a steel press. He was the largest man Taro have ever seen (a full two feet taller than himself), and old warder tattoos covered his hairy arms. His sausage-like fingers were so big he could barely hold onto the pen he was scribbling with.

“Excuse me.” Taro felt like he was staring up at a mountain. “My name’s Taro.”

The man swung around. He stared down at Taro like he was bug he’d found floating in his soup. “That supposed to mean something to me?”

“Mr. Crissom said you’d have work for me.”

The overseer flipped through his papers and scrunched his face. “Another peon, eh?” He grabbed Taro, and was able to wrap his fingers entire width of his upper arm. “You got no meat on you, boy.”

“I can do any work you give me.”

“You won’t be getting any special treatment here. I suspect that means you won’t last a day. A win-win in my book.”

“What’ll I be hauling?”

The overseer blustered a laugh. “Hauling? Oh no, you’ll start your illustrious career in the blast furnace.”

The blast furnace was as bad as it sounded. It was deep in the heart of the foundry, and was the source of the steam coming off the building. From hundreds of yards away and through a set of walls, he could feel the heat. Now, only a few feet from the smoldering pit, the heat was overwhelming.

Twelve conveyor belts passed the furnace. Two brought heaps of coal to forty workers with shovels. They scooped the coal up and tossed it into the flames. The others belts were padded with carbon and hauled fresh, red-hot steel plates from the heart of the fire. The plates dropped into another belt submerged in water where they were cooled. When this happened, a blast of hot steam erupted from the bubbling pool. At the end they were pressed with ‘CRISSOM FDY’ and sent to Packaging, most of which were bound for the Magisterium.

“The steam’ll melt the skin off your bones,” the overseer said. “And not that it matters, but you’ll be paid a full noble an hour.”

Taro might as well have been offered a money tree.

“If you slack off, you’re fired. If you stop shoveling during your shift, you’re fired. If you break any equipment, you’re fired. If you slow your crew down so it doesn’t meet its quota—”

“Let me guess, I’m fired?”

The overseer grabbed a shovel from a rack and pushed it into Taro’s hands. Its handle was warm to the touch.

He took a spot beside the other workers and scooped the first load of coal off the belt and into the fire. It was like he’d fallen into the deepest circle of Hell. His fingers burned every time they got close to the open flames, and each scoop was harder than the last. Coal dust choked the air, stung his eyes, and filled the cracks in his skin.

Every so often the overseer would enter the furnace room. He kept his eyes fixed on either his notes or some bit of equipment, but Taro knew he was really keeping an eye on him, waiting for him to screw up or give up.

Four hours into it, Taro’s mouth was so dry he couldn’t swallow. His face and hair so caked in black dust he’d be unrecognizable to his friends. The next shift came in to relieve him and his coworkers, and Taro followed the men out of the furnace room.

One of them introduced himself as Rin. “Never seen a mite workin’ the furnace,” he said. It was the first time anyone had spoken.

Taro tried to speak, but all that came out was a hard cough. With some effort he was able to say, “First day.”

“Blimey, Overseer must have it in for you,” an older man said. He shook Taro’s raw hand and introduced himself as Tomin. “Furnace on day one is cruel even for him.”

A short two corridors away was a locker room where Taro was able to wash up. His clothes were ruined, however, and there was no way to easily clean them here.

Every day for the next month Taro showed up and worked his knuckles to the bone. This would’ve been bad enough, but he still had his normal duties to attend to in the Magisterium and his trial was fast-approaching.

_____

“Hurry up, Taro!” Ven shouted as he leaped over gears and barreled around a corner in a dead-sprint towards Magister Veldheim’s class. “We’re going to be late.”

Taro wheezed as he tried to keep up. He felt like he was going to throw-up a gallon of soot. “We’re already late.”

When they opened the workshop door, Taro thought they’d made a wrong turn somewhere. The room was completely different from how it appeared yesterday. In the back were a dozen white crates with cross-hatches on the front and bees the size of grapefruits swarmed around them. Veldheim and the others were wearing chainmail suits and hats with see-through cloth covering their face and neck.

“Sorry we’re late,” Taro said.

“Shush,” Veldheim whispered. “No loud noises, no sudden movements.” He pointed to more suits hanging on the wall. Taro and Ven put them on slowly while the giant bees swarmed the room.

“As I was just telling your classmates,” Veldheim continued, “noise is the enemy with the Apocra.”

“Giant bees,” Suri said.

“Wasps,” Veldheim corrected. “Bees are useful creatures that produce honey. Wasps don’t normally make anything useful. But the venom the queen produces can be a potent ink for motion enchantments. Can you guess what today’s task is?”

Suri strafed towards Taro. “Where’s Nima?”

“I thought she was with you,” Taro said.

“Maybe she overslept,” Ven said.

Two hours and eight stings later, class was over. The chainmail suit had helped catch the half-inch stinger, but the tips managed to graze Taro’s skin. Antherion was waiting in the Conservatorium with a special herb that would sooth it (apparently this was a common occurrence).

Antherion’s class was decidedly less life-threatening. They checked on the plants they’d sowed on day one; Taro’s had budding teeth and was starting to grow grape-like fruit on its stalk. According to Antherion, this fruit was bait for its prey.

As another hour passed, Taro started to get unnerved. Nima was still nowhere to be found. Antherion was busy discussing the finer points of fungal herblore when Taro stood.

“On page seventeen you’ll note the ten mushrooms that can be combined with the Apocra venom. Please copy these down, as I will reference them later.” Antherion’s enormous amber eyes zeroed in on Taro. “Is there a problem?”

“May I be excused?”

Antherion huffed so hard it almost knocked Taro backwards. “This information could mean life or death for you during your trial.”

Taro didn’t see how that could be possible, but didn’t argue the point. “I understand, sir, but this an emergency.”

Antherion pointed his tail towards a clearing and the exit appeared. “If you must, but I expect you to review the chapter on your own time.”

Taro rushed back to the inn. He half-expected Nima be inside, still asleep. The other half expected it to be empty and Nima to be elsewhere. Either of these would’ve been preferable than what he actually found.

The room was trashed. Nima’s books, inscriber, and artificing tools littered the floor. Cracked vials of ink had rolled to the corners and the mattress was falling off the bed frame. Just in front of the door were small handprints made in ink, as if Nima had been dragged from the room. Just at the end of the ink streaks was a word she’d hastily scribbled with her fingers: ‘book.’

It didn’t take half a second for it to click for Taro. He dropped his artificing supplies and marched outside. He didn’t go directly to Rashkal’s book cart; first he stopped by a blacksmith. He sat few pennies onto the man’s hand and said, “I need a knife.”

The blacksmith sold him six inch blade, which he slipped into his belt.

The book cart was not in its usual place and the greasy shopkeeper was nowhere in sight. Taro scanned the area with a burning determination, looking for any familiar face until his eyes stopped on one of the boys who’d tried to steal from Moira months ago.

Something in Taro’s mind snapped. It was one thing to harm or threaten him, but quite another to harm Nima. He grabbed the boy’s arm with such force that he thought he’d broken his wrist. He yanked him into an empty alley and thrust him against the cold bricks with one hand around his mouth.

He waved the knife in front of the boy’s horrified eyes.

“I know your boss took my sister.” The boy tried to deny it even with his mouth covered, but Taro shushed him and pressed the knife to his neck. “In a moment I’m going to take my hand off. If you don’t tell me exactly where she is, I swear you won’t ever talk again.”

When Taro removed his hand, the boy burst into tears. Taro shook him hard and his head thumped against the brick wall. “Where?”

The boy fought to speak through his huffing and tears. “H-h-he took her to the Downings.”

“That’s in the lower city?”

The boy nodded and Taro let him down. “What’s your name?

He wiped the tears from his eyes. “Clyde.”

Taro took the inscriber from his pocket and grabbed Clyde’s hand. “Do you know what this is?”

“A magister’s wand?”

“Very good.” Taro scribbled a bit of nonsense on the back of Clyde’s hand. “You see, I’m a magister. And that girl your boss took? She’s my little sister.”

Clyde’s eyes widened. “We didn’t—"

Taro shushed him. “This mark on your hand is a special kind of magic. If you move more than ten feet from me at any time, it’ll drop you stone dead. Please, Clyde, if you feel like testing it out go ahead and run.” Taro gave him a sinister grin. “Otherwise, you’re going to take me to Rashkal.”

Clyde walked so close to Taro it must’ve looked a bit strange to the casual observer. The Downings was a mile south, along what looked like the end of the underground. Here huge dripping pipes and culverts draining into a mushy river below. It wasn’t sewage or storm water, it looked more like an oily runoff from the Magisterium.

This area was much less populated than the rest of the lower city. There were no crowds here, and certainly no shops. The only people in this place were the drunkards and destitute. Many had turned boxes and crates into makeshift homes and burned trash for warmth. Others weren’t so lucky and slept directly on the icy ground.

Clyde pointed towards a rusty culvert with the bars filed off. Water was trickling out of it into the oily river. “That’s it.”

They climbed into the culvert and continued for a dozen yards down a drain pipe with an inch of oily water at the bottom.

Two boys, one of which was older than Taro, waited at the end of the pipe. They sat by a lantern throwing darts at a wooden plank. The plank was nailed to a large wooden barrel, and fourteen other barrels lined the small room. One of them was overturned and red liquid spilled out of it and mixed with the water at the bottom of the culvert.

“Who’s your friend?” the older one said, just missing the drawn-on circle with the number 20 scratched into it.

“He’s lookin’ for work,” Clyde said. He was fairly convincing considering the circumstances.

“Might wanna bring him back tomorrow. Rashkal’s busy with that Magisterium girl.” The boy had grin that made Taro want to bash his face in. “She’s a feisty one.”

“What did she do?” Taro asked, trying to summon the strength not to punch the kid’s teeth out.

“Been workin’ in our territory. Her bein’ in the Magisterium’s just a bonus. Rashkal wanted her snuffed, but that Sikes kid’s gone squealing to the boss.” He threw another dart, totally missing the board. “If you bother him, it’s your funeral.”

Taro motioned for Clyde to continue into a cramped three-foot wide pipe. Nima’s muffled whimpering and Rashkal’s shouting coming from the end.

Clyde stopped in his tracks. “I did what you asked, can I please go?”

Taro took the boy’s hand and crossed out the symbol with an ‘x’. “I don’t want to see you again. Ever. Is that understood?”

The boy nodded.

Clyde bolted, and Taro peaked around the hallway bend into the next room. It was filled with stacks of more barrels and broken pieces of furniture. Nima was tied and gagged in the corner.

“I said shut up!” Rashkal hurdled a chair leg into a pile just below an air vent. “Freezin’ my ass off is bad enough without your squealin’.” He tried in vain to light the treated wood, and became increasingly angry that it wasn’t working.

Nima got to her feet but the Rashkal pushed her down with one boot to her back. He grabbed splintered piece of wood and pressed it to her neck. “Feel that? One more squeak and I’ll bleed that pretty neck dry. Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you?”