Chapter 20: A Stubborn Breed
In those days every market in the trade lay inside the Empire's fist.
Mastery of the long routes—routes that had begun with the caravans of a desert country—had passed to the Bayer Empire, which opened more than thirty new sea lanes. The immense wealth that followed, and the flowering of culture, hardly need to be told.
To speak of that brilliant past and leave out the Imperial Navy would be absurd. And yet the Empire's shipbuilding, taken by itself, was nothing extraordinary. What it had instead was a small, sure gift.
Pirates were the navy's usual opponent. Of every origin and in every number, they fell on Imperial merchantmen heavy with costly cargo whenever a gap showed itself, seized what they could, and ran—again and again.
But an Imperial warship was always faster than the pirate ship it chased. Even if the chase ended with both of them dead, it never let one slip away.
Opinions differ, but the speed of those warships—always just a little faster than any vessel set against them—is often named as the very thing that carried the Empire's long peace.
Perhaps that was why. When a Federation sailing ship set a new mark for top speed, the Empire's ships simply stopped. No thought of pursuit, in technology or in culture or in magic. The moment what had been moving came to rest, the balance of power turned over.
How profound.
Thud—!
"Ah—damn."
The side of my head sang. The train had been rocking gently all the while, and then it must have lurched hard once. I'd been dozing, and I drove my skull squarely into the carriage wall.
"Some dream that was."
Wondering if we'd already arrived, I looked out the window. The noisy port city was gone. Green fields and the foot of a mountain slid slowly past, and beyond the ridge the sun was going down at its leisure. I swallowed the thought that the Federation's scenery wasn't half bad, and propped my chin on my hand.
Watching the land flow by in silence, I began to see things no still life and no landscape painting ever shows. The fields close in whipped past. The ridge far off crept along. The setting sun did not stir at all.
A simple thing. The train was moving fast, and distance changed the look of the motion. The point was this: the fields, the ridge, and the sun were not moving. The train I rode in was.
The worthless dream came back. What if the Empire had not cut off its own progress at all—what if the Federation had simply grown powerful at a speed too great to catch? Like a train leaving the fields behind it. Like Imperial warships, faster than the pirates they hunted.
"……."
A difference in speed like that—doesn't it always drag some upheaval after it?
The instant I pushed the thought that far, I understood something else. Dreams dreamt in a shallow sleep are, almost always, nonsense.
It was a couple of hours later that the train breathed out its last steam over a city laid under forlorn moonlight.
"We've arrived at Leslie Station—!"
The bite of acrid smoke stung my nose. It wasn't a smell I didn't know. A faint thread of it had hung in the air from the moment I set foot in Oris Station, and it had been strongest when I stood before the locomotive—most likely coal dust tangled with the reek of coal burning. I pinched my nose anyway, stepping down at Leslie, because here it hung several times thicker than it had at Oris.
The cause wasn't hard to find.
"So they haul the coal by rail, too."
On a second set of tracks beside the train, freight wagons stood in a line, loaded not with passengers but with coal. Heaped with it—so much I couldn't begin to reckon the total.
"……."
I'd expected a coal mine in Leslie. At this scale, though, there is a mine no longer seemed an adequate way to put it. A principal source, more like. One that fed coal to the whole Federation. Seen in that light, the grim faces in the third-class carriage began to explain themselves. They'd come looking for work, the same as I had.
About then the people leaving the train started to divide. One group wore tidy clothes and carried light bags, and they made for the ticket office. The other was thick with men in soiled clothes, fingertips glossed black with coal dust, and they were heading out of the station.
I checked what I had left. Nine pounds, and a few coins. In the Empire that would have laid a feast. Out here the meaning of it had changed. I knew by now that a single night under a proper roof would swallow the whole sum. And with that, it was clear which crowd I was meant to follow.
There was a remarkably efficient arrangement called a bunkhouse. I'd been wavering—could any inn really take in several dozen people at once? Had the hour finally come to spend the long apprenticeship I'd served in sleeping rough?—when the voices reached me.
"Bunkhouse No. 1—room for fifty—!"
"No. 2 is full!"
"Bunkhouse No. 3, taking twenty-five—!"
"Bunkhouse No. 4—!"
The moment those halfhearted touts sang out, the crowd began to scatter, every face worn thin. At the time I'd wondered what on earth was happening. Now, though—after a sound sleep in Bunkhouse No. 3, drawing in the morning air at the foot of the mountain—I understood a bunkhouse perfectly well.
A decent room ran eight pounds a night. I'd thought that steep, and judging by this crowd, so did they. Most of the people who had left the train and come this far were short of money. A few coins mattered more to them than the courtesies a traveler might want—a private room, a soft bed.
The bunkhouse existed for miners in exactly that position. A blanket, space enough to lay one body down, and a modest meal; and for that, only two pounds a night. A rather ruthless bit of business, and an effective one.
"Hah. Not bad."
It appealed. If it had a flaw, it was that I'd had to sleep with my arms locked around my book of magic, for fear someone would steal it.
"Nnngh."
It was still early. I loosened up with a light stretch and drew a long breath. I wasn't in bad shape.
A little time passed, and people woke and came out one by one. Among those who had slept in Bunkhouse No. 3 were quite a few around my age, or a little older. They must have slept poorly; shadow sat under their eyes. One of them, a beanpole of a man who had been breathing deep beside me, spoke up. He was creaking, too.
"Hey, mister."
"Me?"
"Yeah. How are you this fine? More than one or two of us feel like our backs are about to go."
"I'm not particular about where I sleep."
"And that breakfast the rest of us leave half-eaten—you were the only one putting it away like it tasted of something."
He meant the jerky, tougher than leather, and the bread hard as stone. It had been so long since I'd tasted meat that I'd eaten without a thought. The others, plainly, were less impressed.
The beanpole let out a long sigh.
"In a mine like this, eating and sleeping run straight into your stamina. I envy you."
"Haha."
I scratched my cheek as if embarrassed, and gave no answer to that last part. It cut too close to the way I'd grown up.
"……."
Let it slip in public, even by accident, that I was from the Empire, and it would not end at a night in a cell. I shut my mouth tight.
Careful.
The men whose fingertips were already black, I learned, were those already assigned to a numbered shaft at one mine or another. Mining takes strength and stamina, and you cannot be formally hired until you have passed an examination to match. So I went to the assignment office with the others whose fingers were still white.
It had the shape of a one-story hut. Two examiners stood inside, and as we entered they raked the room with crooked smiles.
"……."
Rough air, no question of it. Fortunately, they did explain what we were meant to do.
"First, get your physical from the fella standing next to me. Then look over the papers on the wall yourselves. Tell me the shaft you want and give me your name, and from tomorrow you're assigned there."
The examiner with the cropped hair jerked his chin.
"Conditions and pay change by the shaft, so mind that. If a shaft fills up, the better result on the exam gets priority. Remember it. Physicals first."
The physical was exceedingly simple. Could you swing a pick twenty times in a row?
"Hoo—!"
"Pass."
It was harder than it looked. The proof: of every ten men, two were thrown out of the hut midway, either because they gave out or because the pick left their hands.
When my turn was done I went to the wall where the notices were posted. Eleven shafts in all, and I had to choose one. I'd crouched down and was reading the lines with care, from the bottom up, when—
Thump.
"Huh? What's an ash-head doing in a place like this."
Someone had set a palm on my head. I lifted only my face and looked at his.
"What is it?"
"Sharp eyes, I'll give you that. Hair like yours, I'd say some barbarian blood got mixed in a few generations back—and sure enough."
He pursed his lips in the shape of a whistle, and I felt the hand on my head bear down harder. So this was it. The first plain, direct hatred I had met since coming to the Federation. I could guess the reason. He looked about my age, black hair and black eyes, and trained enough that the shape of the muscle showed even through his clothes. Still holding my head down, he went on.
"Which shaft are you taking?"
"Why do you ask?"
"So I can take the same one. A weak-willed bastard with barbarian blood won't last a week before he runs. There's a bounty for reporting a deserter, and I'll be glad to snap it up—so feel free to run."
He wore that thin, fishy smile, and waved a hand toward the front. "Examiner! Name's Damon—I set the record on the physical just now. I'll go wherever this one goes!"
Damon, then. And I'd used up about as much politeness as he was owed. I rose, slowly.
"Damon."
"……?"
"A bounty for reporting deserters. Useful thing to know. Thanks."
Damon's hand still rested on my head. He could not stop me from standing. It may never have been possible. I hadn't noticed while I was crouched, but the moment my knees locked straight I was looking down at him from half a handspan above. I raised a hand of my own.
"Examiner. Eugene Oslo and Damon—two of us. Shaft No. 7, please."
"…You serious?"
"Of course."
Highest intensity of labor.
Two meals a day, served plain. Return to the bunkhouse permitted after two days' duty. Sleeping at the mouth of the shaft recommended.
Pay: double.
"Damon."
"You… what kind of nerve picks the notorious Shaft No. 7…"
I tried on the same thin smile he had worn.