‘I suppose we should be going.’ Joeyn drained his mug.
She stayed where she was. ‘I’m worried, Joe. Irisis tries to take the credit for my good work and blames me for everything that goes wrong. She hates me because I’m better than she is. She’s afraid I’ll be made crafter. Just because her uncle had the position …’
‘And her father and grandfather before that. Birth is right, to a lot of people.’
‘And I’m not one of them. Especially since I have no father.’
‘Well, what you lack in heritage you must make up for in sweat and cleverness. Let’s go up to the mine and see what we can find.’
Inside, in the lift basket, Joeyn kept winding down after they reached the fifth opening.
‘I thought this part was closed off,’ Tiaan said as the basket shuddered to a stop at the sixth level.
‘It is.’
‘Isn’t it dangerous?’
‘Parts are very dangerous. Fortunately I know which parts.’
She looked down. The shaft continued. ‘What’s below this?’
‘Levels seven, eight and nine. Don’t ever go down there.’
‘Is the rock all rotten?’
‘Yes, and some parts are flooded. Pity, because there’s more ore down there, and richer, than ever was taken from the higher levels.’
‘What about crystal?’
‘Don’t know. That’s before my time. No one was interested in crystal in them days. Leastways, not here. It would have all been tossed on the mullock heaps, unless a pretty bit caught someone’s fancy.’
‘Maybe I should try there,’ Tiaan said.
‘Too late. I had a look after Barkus first asked me for crystal. I couldn’t sense anything at all. They must need to be freshly mined.’
‘I wonder if that could be the problem?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe the operators had the controllers out in the sun, and the last crystals were really sensitive to it.’
‘Perhaps. Could also be heat, or frost, or wet. Coming?’
The tunnel snaked this way and that, following the seams. There were many dead ends where seams pinched out or were truncated by faults or shear zones full of crumbled rock and greasy clay. After some hard walking they reached a low mound of rubble. Joeyn surveyed it carefully, holding his lantern up to check the roof.
‘See the cracks up there? An old fracture zone runs right through. Rocks are all shattered to bits; just a few seams of quartz holding it together.’
Her eye followed his battered finger. A web of cracks ran across the roof. Another, larger crack snaked down the side of the tunnel as far as she could see. ‘What if …?’
‘If we’re under it when it comes down, we’re dead! If beyond, we can probably move enough rubble to get out. Depending how much falls. Still want to go?’
‘Can we find the crystal I need anywhere else?’
‘Not quickly.’ He raised an eyebrow, which already had rock dust clinging to it.
‘I’ll do whatever you say.’
‘There’s a lot of dead miners who thought the roof would stay up. Still, I think this one is good for a while. We’ll go carefully. No loud noises. Follow ten paces behind, so if I set something off …’
Tiaan shivered, feeling the roof twitch above her. He patted her shoulder. ‘I started in the mines when I was eight. You develop a nose for danger, if you survive.’
She stayed well back, anxious as she walked under the fractures. Grit trickled down her neck. The place turned out to be a long way in. They went under several more unstable areas before Joeyn stopped where the tunnel terminated in triple dead ends like the stumps of amputated fingers.
‘Up there!’ He pointed with a chisel.
Tiaan lifted up her lantern. A massive vein, hollow in the centre, slashed across the middle end of the tunnel. It was bristling with crystals fist-sized or bigger, more perfect than any she had seen. She could feel something too – the field. She wished she had her pliance so she could sense it properly. If she closed her eyes she could almost see it as coloured curls and billows, like tendrils of chromatic fog moving in and out of the three dimensions. All her senses seemed more acute, as if the field was amplifying them. She wanted those crystals. Tiaan darted forward.
Joeyn caught her by the collar as she went past. ‘Stop!’
The shock jerked her off her feet. Tiaan rubbed her throat, which was bruised from the collar. He steadied her.
‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to hurt you. It isn’t safe there.’
The roof above the vein contained a series of concentric fractures as well as cracks radiating from the centre. The pattern was rather like a spider’s web.
Her skin crept. ‘I don’t know why I ran, Joe. I just felt drawn to it.’
‘I can feel it too. I often have, down here, though I was never tempted. I don’t see how we can get to the vein, Tiaan. The roof is much worse than I remember. It’s going to fall. Soon!’
‘Is there no way we could hold it up?’
He eyed the rock. ‘Wouldn’t be easy. Could take days to get enough plates and props in here, and it’d probably come down on us while we were putting them up.’
‘What about making it fall?’
He stroked his jaw. ‘You don’t know what else will come with it. The entire roof could collapse.’
‘Oh!’ She felt her last hope disappearing.
He paced back and forth, examining the roof from various vantage points. ‘Don’t give up yet.’
Sitting on the floor, Joeyn withdrew a roll of cord from his pack and tied a slipknot in one end. Laying the knot over the end of his pick handle, he ran the cord down the handle and crept around the wall until he was as close as he could get to the vein without going under the cracked roof.
He reached up with the pick, as high as he could, but not high enough. He edged forward a bit, just under the shattered zone. Still he could not reach. Going right under, and lifting the pick high, Joeyn eased the handle up to a single crystal, trying to slip the knot over the end. The cord fell down.
Creeping back to the safe area, Joeyn replaced the knot and tried again with the same result. He tried a third time. The cord slipped over the crystal. Putting down the pick he pulled the cord tight and gave it a jerk. The crystal did not move. A harder jerk and the cord broke.
Joeyn cursed, which brought on a fit of coughing. He bent double, gasping and choking.
‘Don’t stand there, please. Get out of the way!’ She imagined the roof thundering down on him. No crystal was worth that risk.
The fit ended. He wiped his mouth, gave her a weak kind of a grin and looked up. ‘It’s not my day yet, Tiaan.’
‘How many dead miners have said that?’ she murmured.
‘Thousands.’ A better grin.
Tossing the cord aside, he slipped along the wall, reached up with the handle of the pick and with a single blow snapped off the small crystal. Unfortunately it fell back among the others. Dust filtered down from the roof. Tiaan caught her breath. Joeyn flipped the pick end for end, caught the handle, stood on tiptoe and flicked the crystal out. He caught it in his other hand, creaked backwards and landed in the safe area. Chips of stone fell from the roof.
As he came across, there was a spring in his step she had never seen before. ‘My lady!’ Holding out the crystal, he bowed.
‘Thank you.’ She embraced him, the hand holding the crystal touched her ear and she went rigid against him.
‘Something the matter?’ he asked, stepping back.
She rubbed her ear. ‘It felt as if something stung me.’ Tiaan took the crystal. It was smaller than the ones she normally worked with, not much thicker than her thumb. It might not do for a hedron but it looked perfect for her sensor helm. Unlike the other crystals it was perfectly clear, save for a hexagon of tiny bubbles midway along its length.
It did not sting her hand but Tiaan could feel the potential in it – stronger than any crystal she’d ever had.