'Joe?' she whispered. 'Joeyn?'
She ran around the pile. He lay on his face with one of the roof props across his back, weighed down with rubble the size of small boulders. Tiaan fell to her knees beside him. 'Joe?' She stroked the thin hair off his cheek. It was warm. Her heart leapt. A trickle of blood ran out of his nose. 'Joe?'
He gave the tiniest of groans, deep in his chest, and his eyes came open. 'Tiaan?'
'It's me!' She clutched his hand. 'What happened?'
'Want to send you off… best you could possibly have.'
She thought of that glowing crystal up the back of the cavity; the one she'd so coveted. He had dug out the vein at the front and dozens of crystals were piled against the wall. The craving urged her to throw herself on them, even with Joeyn dying here. She felt disgusted by her weakness.
'You shouldn't have, Joe. Any one of those would have done. How did you hope to get to it anyway?'
His eyes indicated a long pole with a wooden jaw on the end, closed by pulling on a string.
'Oh, Joe!' She stroked his brow. 'Let's get you out.' She began to toss the rocks to one side. Grit sifted down from the roof.
'Stop!' he gasped. 'There's more to come down, Tiaan. Maybe all of it.'
'I don't care! I'm not leaving you here.'
'Tiaan,' he gasped, breath bubbling in his chest. 'I can't feel anything from the waist down. My back is broken and I've burst something inside. I'm dying.'
'No!' she screamed. 'I won't let you.'
'This is the way it's meant to be. I'm a lonely old man. I've spent my whole life down here. Do you think I want to become a cripple who can't even wipe his bottom?'
'I want you to live,' she muttered.
'That's cruel. But I'd like you to do something for me.'
'Anything.'
'Take my belt off. I want you to have it.'
'I don't want your wretched belt.'
'Do as I ask, Tiaan.'
It was not easy, weighed down as he was, but at last she managed it. It was thick and rather heavy.
'It's a money belt,' he whispered. 'There's enough gold and silver in it to carry you a tidy stretch of your journey.'
'I'm not taking your gold,' she said stubbornly.
'I can't spend the gold where I'm going. I have no relatives left. Put the damn thing on, Tiaan!'
Shocked by his vehemence, she pulled it round her, found that it needed another hole to buckle at her small waist, and began to make one with the point of his knife.
'Take the knife too. It's a good one.'
Putting the belt on, she hung the knife from its loop. This was unbearable. Tiaan paced across the tunnel and back. Across again. Her eye lit on the pile of crystals he'd worked so hard to get. Picking out the best of them, she held it up. It did nothing for her craving, of course. It had to be woken first, and that would be a mighty job without her pliance. She squatted beside him. 'How are you feeling, Joe?'
'Not so good! I wouldn't mind a drink though.'
'I've got a bottle of water…'
'I don't want your bloody water. I'll die before I ever touch water again.'
Smiling sadly, she looked for his pack, which was propped against the far wall. She found the flask, lifted his head as best she could and held it to his mouth. He took in a small amount of the dreadful brandy.
'More!' He attempted a grin. 'It won't kill me, you know.'
'How can you joke about it?' She brushed tears out of her eyes.
'How can you not?'
She gave him a good-sized slug.
He gasped. 'That's better. This is the way I've always wanted to go, Tiaan. Would you bring my pick and hammer and chisel? I'd like them to hand.'
She laid them on the floor beside him.
'We've been together a long time, old friends,' he said. 'Let's go the last little step together, shall we?' His left hand extended to stroke the handle of his pick. 'You've served me well.' His eyes closed. He murmured a snatch of an old song, one that had been popular in his distant youth. 'Are you still there, Tiaan?'
'Yes,' she whispered, quite overcome. 'I'm not going anywhere.'
'Could I have another drop of brandy?'
She tilted the flask, although this time he seemed to have trouble swallowing. 'Joe?' She clutched his hand.
'Yes?'
'Is there any other way out of this mine?'
'Why?'
'They're looking for me. Nish the artificer went down to the village just as I was leaving.'
He said nothing for so long that Tiaan thought he must have slipped away. His hand was a rigid claw, clutching hers. She squeezed it and he spoke.
'There used to be a way out from the ninth level. A long, long adit that ran south to the Bhu-Gil mine. Its entrance was blocked up a long time ago, though it could have been unblocked since. We miners are a greedy lot; the things we get up to in our spare time, no one knows.'
'Any other way?'
'Not that… I know of. Not good, too many entrances to a mine. Gold just turns to air.' He gave a quiet chuckle. 'Probably flooded. Long swim, my girl.'
'Oh!' She remembered him saying that the other day. 'No other way out?'
'Who knows? Some miners are thieves, and the thieves don't tell the honest ones.'
That was not much help. 'More brandy, Joe?'
'Just a taste, to wet my tongue.'
She dribbled a little more into his mouth. It ran out again. His fingers stroked the pick handle, then lay still.
'Joe!' she cried. There was no answer. 'Joe?'
'Something for you,' he said in a whisper no louder than a sigh. 'Help you on your way.'
'I've already got the money belt.'
'Something else…' He tried to smile but the breath whistled out of him; Joe gave a little shudder and lay still.
He was dead. Tears swelled under her eyelids. Poor Joe, such a gentle, kindly old man. She kissed him on the forehead, closed his eyes and put his hand on the pick. As she did, something slipped out of his other hand, something that glowed faintly in iridescent swirls, like oil on luminous water.
It was the crystal she'd lusted after when she saw it up the far end of the cavity the other day. It was a bipyramid of quartz, blushing the faintest rose, but inside each end was a radiating ball of needle crystals finer than human hair. The two balls were almost joined down the length of the prism by longer needles, but there was a gap in the middle, a tiny bubble of air partly filled with liquid.
She picked up the crystal and light exploded in her mind, rainbow streamers that went in all directions, coiling, looping and whorling back on themselves endlessly. It was as if she was inside the field, but one unlike any she had ever seen before. Rather, there was more to it than before. Curves and circles and spheres appeared out of nowhere to drift across her view, constantly changing shape and size, disappearing then re-forming differently, as if she was seeing fragments of structures that had the wrong dimensions for this world.
The crystal was already awake – it had to be! It was ecstasy, not least because the withdrawal was gone instantly. It was disturbing too. Her head spun with the effort of trying to make sense of it all.
She had often seen rutilated quartz. It was common in this mine and many of the best hedrons were made from such crystals. But she had never come across anything as perfect or symmetrical as this one. It made her hair stand on end to think what, as an artisan, she might have done with it.
Tiaan wrapped the hedron in a scrap of leather and put it safely in her pack. Kissing Joe's brow, she took the flask. There was some bread and cheese in his pack. She ate that, sharing one last meal with her old friend, and saluted him with a tot of the turnip brandy. Laying his pack beside him, she took her lantern, leaving his to burn down in its own time, and departed without a backward glance.
PART TWO
Nish wrote a long letter to his father on the day Tiaan's indenture was sold to the breeding factory. He told Jal-Nish everything, except for his dealings with Irisis. The perquisitor would expect a full report and he dared leave nothing out that could be heard from anyone else. Inquisitors were also watched. Probers, being no more than prentices in the spying art, were especially subject to surveillance.