Valdemar 03 - [Collegium 01] - Foundation Read online

  “That don’t sound safe,” he muttered, fishing a bright flash of red out of the pan. “I take all the risk, an’ fer what? If I git caught, yer off free, an’ if you git caught, ye kin say I give it ye and niver say ye ast for it.” Davey had never done anyone a kindness so far as Mags knew. He had never been cruel, but he had never done anyone a kindness either. That didn’t make him exceptional; just about everybody was that way. But it also didn’t make him trustworthy.

  And hadn’t he just said he’d been getting favors from the cook that he hadn’t been sharing with the rest, like he was supposed to. That made him even less trustworthy. Like Demmon, he’d been greedy. But unlike Demmon, he’d been sly and had never told anybody.

  For that matter, now that Mags came to think about it, no one here was really trustworthy on that scale. Even the littlest of the kiddies would give you up for more food. That was why everything good got shared and split, so everyone was equally guilty if there was guilt to go around.

  But Davey hadn’t shared. Which meant—what? Probably nothing good. That he was sneaky, for sure. And greedy, for sure. And that anything he did would always be all about what he got out of it.

  Mags was good at watching things out of the corner of his eye, and for a moment, Davey’s expression turned savage, and more than angry enough to make the hair on Mags’ neck stand up. Then he laughed. “Suit yerself. You ain’t the only one diggin’ out sparklies. If you won’t, summun else will.” And then the older boy turned away, fixing his attention on his own pan.

  Which was the truth; what was also the truth was that Davey himself was deep into a good vein of greens. So Davey could snitch his own sparklies, if he chose. It just might have been a trap.

  Well, if Davey thought that turning away would make Mags beg for the chance to get what he was offering, he could think again. He’d played that game years ago, to get the donkeys into harness, showing a wisp of grass and then turning away with it. The donkeys would go for it, every time, and Mags was pretty sure he was smarter than a donkey.

  He thought about turning the tables on Davey, going to one of Cole’s boys and saying “That there Davey offered stuff if I’d snitch him a sparkly an’ give it him afore he flits.”

  But Davey had never harmed him before this. There were a lot of unspoken rules among the kiddies, and one of them was, you didn’t be the one to do the bad first.

  If the offer was genuine, and not a trap, then Davey wasn’t being the one doing the bad first. And maybe because he was about to flit, the Pieters boys were watching Davey too closely for him to snitch any of his greenies, so he was coming to Mags, who wasn’t being watched so closely.

  And anyway, that was tellin’, and the one thing a kiddie didn’t do was tellin’ on another. Davey’d have to do him a mort of bad before he’d go so low as tellin’. Tellin’ something like this could lead to terrible things, things there were only rumors of in the dark before sleep took them all. Things like tales of kiddies getting’ “caught” in the hammer-mill and crushed to death, or knocked down the well by the bucket-chain and drownded, or goin’ to take a pee and the shaft roof come down so hard there was no getting ’em out, ’cause there weren’t nothing to get out. Things that was supposed to be accidents, but everyone knew they weren’t.

  So he kept his nose on his business, sending the gravel down the sluice when it was panned out, concentrating on the weak warmth on his back as a counter to the cold numbing of his hands and arms, and watching in that peculiarly unfocused state that let him spot the tiny sparks of color and light that others missed. The little wooden dish at his side filled steadily—though he was careful, all things considered, to keep it on the side away from Davey. Just in case. ’Cause if Davey was angry he hadn’t agreed to the snitch, then Davey could be malicious and knock his dish into the water, and he’d have little to show for his shift at the sluice.

  But it did occur to him, that Davey’s tale just might have a grain of use in it, that it might be worth his while to listen under windows now and again. It just might be he could learn something useful there, useful enough to lose some sleep to get it.

  The air began to take on a chill as the light from the sun got more gold and less white, and then more amber and less gold, and then went to red as the sun touched the horizon. And because at that point any further panning was pretty much useless, since there would be no way to spot the tiny bits of sparklies in the dark sluice water, Jarrik turned up and ordered them to put pans down and turn over their findings. As usual, Mags turned over a bowl nearly half full with tiny bits. As usual, all he got for his efforts was a grunt.

  Then it was off to supper, more cabbage soup and bread with extra bread for Mags, while another of the dough-faced Pieters girls read falteringly out of some holy book or other. Mags had no idea what the book was, or the god. The girl read so badly it was hard to make sense of what she was saying, for most of the words were too big for her, and she sounded them out badly.

  This was the priest’s idea, and Cole obviously wanted to be on the good side of the priest. They got read at by the girls at night-meal, preached at by one of the boys that was supposed to go for a priest at morning. Neither the girl nor the boy put any feeling into it. They both made it look and sound as if they were only doing it ’cause they’d get a beating if they didn’t.

  Mags ignored it. It was all the same rubbish anyway. Suffer on earth and be rewarded in a heaven he didn’t believe in, by gods who didn’t see fit to do something about misery right now.

  Sometimes, when he had a moment to think, and something turned his mind toward these gods the priests were so big about, he wanted to hit the priests, hit the gods if they existed. But that took energy, and mostly he didn’t have the energy to waste. He’d rather have had silence over his meal, or someone to read a book that told you something useful, like how to stay warmer in the winter, or what plants were good to eat. It would have made him mad tonight, to have this girl prattling on about nonsense, except that for a change there was enough food in his belly that he was immediately getting sleepy once he’d stuffed the last of his extra bread in his mouth. He looked up, to see that the three cripples on night shift were just now tottering in. And if he beat the others to the sleep-hole, the straw would still be warm from the cripples’ bodies, he’d get the choice of blankets, and he’d be in the middle of the pile of bodies tonight, which was always the warmest place.

  The logic was immaculate, and not even the thought of trying out Davey’s idea tempted him away from it. He hurried across to the barn, crawled into the pit, wrapped himself up in the least torn of the coverings, and was asleep so quickly and so thoroughly that when the others joined him, he wasn’t even aware they were there.

  When Jarrik roused them all in the morning, there was a distinct bite to the air, and when they pulled themselves out of the sleep-hole in the thin light of dawn, there was thick frost all over everything. Mags sighed unhappily. Winter would be on them before long. And he didn’t envy the kiddies at the sluices this morning at all. There would be ice at the edges of the troughs. By the time his crew took their places there, the water would at least be a little warmer. It was time to think about finding a moment here and there to plait some rush and straw bags, or find the end of a sack somewhere. That was what they all used in winter instead of shoes, stuffing the bags full of straw to try and keep off the frostbite. The lucky ones found rags to wrap around their feet, and the really lucky ones, now and then found bits of wool too soiled or ruined in the shearing to spin, that they could stuff in those bags. Maybe something would happen that would give them a few hours off the sluices, like the bucket-chain breaking down. If that happened, Mags could go gather a mort of things that would help. Nuts to hide away, seed-fluff that was almost as good and soft as wool to stuff in the foot bags, cattail roots to eat now.

  There were fifteen kiddies here at the mine now, and the three crippled adults. Ten of the oldest got mining duty, him and Davey and Burd and Tansy and Ket in the
morning, five others in the afternoon. Of the five left over, one was the donkey-boy, and the other four were on the sluices all day. Those four looked particularly miserable this morning; they knew what to expect. They’d be getting chilblains before long, painful red-and-purple bumps on their hands caused by the cold water that could crack and even ulcerate. Of course, if they could get their hands warm, the chilblains would go away, but even taking their hands out of the water for a few moments to warm them in their armpits would mean they weren’t panning the gravel, and if they weren’t panning for sparklies and got caught, they’d get beaten.

  Mags had never gotten chilblains, but he considered it luck more than anything. And even without chilblains, when he was working the sluice in winter, his hands hurt with the cold more than enough. The only time they didn’t have to work the sluices was when it was so cold the troughs froze right up, or when there was a blizzard so thick you couldn’t get to the sluices. And when that happened, it was so cold that there was no good place at all to be but the mine. That had only happened twice, and they had all bundled down there, and not even Master Cole had complained about it. Then again, Mags reckoned he didn’t much care for his workers freezing to death either.

  The mine was definitely the better place to be, come winter. He felt the temperature difference as soon as he was ten feet down the main shaft and the lower he got, following the old cave that the mine had started as, the better he felt. By the time he reached his seam he was almost comfortable. He found the toolbag where it was supposed to be, at the end of the tunnel, which meant someone had been working his seam last night. Which meant that it might need a support . . .

  He fetched a timber, but that left him able to only carry his chisel and hammer, He crawled in, found as he had expected that the roof needed shoring, and hammered his timber in place. Then he went to work.

  The seam he was following continued to yield good sparklies today. Smaller ones, but more of them. Once he had uncovered them, he went back to his bag for a tool made out of a big nail in a handle, something he used to pry small sparklies with good color out of rock rather than chipping at them.

  That was when he overheard Jarrik and one of his brothers talking about something in low, urgent voices.

  Thinking immediately that they might be talking about Davey and his “offer,” he ghosted over to the side of their shaft and strained his ears as hard as he could to hear what they were saying.

  “I ain’t never seen anythin’ like it,” said Melak, a little Jarrik’s junior. “I mean, I heerd the stories, but seein’ one—it ain’t right. It was hot-mad and tryin’ and tryin’ t’get in, and every way it got stopped, it just tried a new one. Smart. Things like that got no right to be as smart as a man.”

  “Ain’t just that it’s smart, neither,” Jarrik grumbled. “It’s got the luck of a devil. Tyndale shot at it, an’ did nothin’ but miss.”

  “It scares me. What’s it want?” There was real fear in Melak’s voice, something Mags was not accustomed to hearing. “Why won’t it go away?”

  “It wants somethin’ here, I guess,” Jarrik replied. “Somethin’, or someone. Either way, Pa ain’t letting it on the property. He swears he’s keepin’ it off.”

  “But how?” Melak almost wailed the words. “Ye can’t shoot it, ye can’t fence it out, and ye can’t stop it! We don’ know what it wants! What if it wants to get in here and kill one of us?”

  “Why would it—” Jarrik stopped.

  “You know why,” Melak said flatly. “You know why. It’s more’n half a spirit, too! It could even be—”

  “Don’t say it!” Jarrik retorted harshly. “Don’t even think it. Let Pa handle it. Let Pa handle it, and leave well enough alone!”

  Standing there in the dark, listening them talk about something they feared so much they wouldn’t even put a name to it, Mags shivered. When had this—monster, or whatever it was—turned up and started besieging the mine? Days ago?

  Now a horde of little things began to make sense. The sluices had been left without a Pieters supervising them, and half the older boys were not at the mine for the past couple of days. The girls had scarcely been seen out-of-doors, and had quickly scuttled back to the Big House when they did come out. The cooks had been less attentive at the giving out of the food, and a fair amount of cabbage and scraps had been joining the broth in the bowls rather than being husbanded in the pot.

  At least half of the workmen hadn’t been visible over the last three days either.

  Maybe that was what had emboldened Davey in the matter of snitching sparklies.

  He slipped back to his seam before the brothers noticed that there wasn’t any tapping coming from his. And as he carefully pried stones out of the wall, he shivered and wondered.

  Most of the time the kiddies were too tired to do anything but sleep when they piled into the sleep-hole. But that didn’t keep them from knowing stories about all kinds of horrible things. The Pieters boys had their own store of tales that they told out, pretending to tell them to each other, but really doing it to scare the kiddies working the seams. Most of the stories were about awful things down here in the mines. There were the ghosts of anyone that had died down here, and Mags knew of some few. These ghosts went about looking for someone who was the exact age they had been when they died—and when they found him, they would tear him apart trying to figure out a way into his body.

  There were the Knockers, twisted-up little dwarfs no taller than your knee, but monstrous strong. They would wait until everyone was preoccupied and then just snatch a kiddie, grabbing him in his seam before he could utter a sound, bashing his head in with his own hammer, then dragging off the body to eat.

  There were the Whisps, ghost-lights that would lead you into dangerous parts of the mine, then drop a rockfall on you. They’d do it by putting you to sleep, then getting you to walk in your sleep to where they were going to kill you.

  There were the Horrors, that got into your head and made you crazy, like the night-shift cripples. When the Horrors got you, all you saw was black things coming at you, all claws and red eyes, and you’d drive your head against the wall of the shaft to try and get them out, or you’d make a cave-in yourself to try and stop them, or if they managed to bring you above the ground, you’d throw yourself down the well to be rid of them.

  But every one of those was a monster in the mine. What about out of it? What was roaming about out there that was so scary the Pieters boys wouldn’t name it, wouldn’t describe it, and didn’t have any bragging ideas on how to get rid of it?

  Suddenly, he didn’t want to leave at the end of the shift.

  And it wasn’t just because the sluice water would be so cursed cold.

  No, he was afraid that whatever it was, it would be up there, Some sort of devil. Mags didn’t believe in gods, but he believed, most fervently, in devils.

  And if a devil had come here, there was likely only one person it had come for. Well, two, maybe, except the boys were saying that Cole Pieters was driving the thing off himself, so it hadn’t come for Master Cole.

  All right, then. It had to be coming for Mags. Because Mags was Bad Blood. It would grab him and drink his blood to make itself stronger. And then it would carry him away to torment him forever.

  No, he did not want to leave the mine now.

  But of course, he had no choice.

  3

  THEY heard the commotion before they emerged from the mine, but it didn’t sound like monsters were invading Master Cole’s property. It sounded more like the day some fool from the local highborn had come nosing about, or at least trying to. He’d brought an armsman with him, but it didn’t do him any good. There was two of them, and a half dozen of Cole Pieters’ sons, and if they didn’t know how to use swords, they didn’t need to, as anyone around would know they were damned good with their crossbows. Master Cole had run the man off then, and no mistaking it. He hadn’t come back either.

  Cole had been hollering about his rights
then, and he was doing so now. His voice echoed harshly down the mine shaft. “I know my rights! Ye can’t just swan in here and make off with whoever ye choose! These are my workers, homeless criminals every one, signed for and turned over to me to use as I need until their time runs out!”

  Criminals? Now Mags knew that was a lie, and a big fat one, too. None of them were criminals, not even he. No one had been signed over by gaolers. Everyone here was here through no fault of their own . . .

  “Evidently,” drawled a new voice, sounding lazy, but with a hard edge of anger beneath the words that Mags doubted Master Cole was hearing. “Evidently you don’t know your rights as well as you think you do, Cole Pieters. I do have the right to ‘swan in here’ and take whomever I please. You are the one violating the law, denying a Companion access to his Chosen, and preventing a Herald from exercising his duty.”

  Mags relaxed. He didn’t really know what a Herald or a Companion were, though the latter sounded dirty, and he really didn’t care. As long as it wasn’t monsters come to tear him to pieces, or devils to torment him, he didn’t care.

  He emerged, blinking as usual, into the bright light of noon. And there was something of a standoff going on in the yard between the mine and the house and its outbuildings.

  There was a man all in white, with two white horses, standing right at a barricade hastily thrown up across the lane leading to the yard. Behind the barricade were Cole Pieters and all of his sons, just like the time when that other fellow had come snooping. Only this time the crossbows weren’t trained on the stranger, much to Cole Pieters’ obvious fury, as he kept looking back at his sons.