In the night she dreamed of the young man on the balcony and the catastrophe that had befallen his world, but this time the images were fleeting, hopeless, as if he had given up hope. The dream shifted into one of her grandmother’s tales, of a young woman going to the rescue of her lover, only the young woman was Tiaan. She shifted under her covers, sighed and slipped back into the wonderful dream.
Tiaan stirred when Joeyn came in around midnight. She sat up, gave him one of those faraway smiles, and went straight back to sleep.
Shaking his head, Joeyn took off his boots and turned to his own cold bed.
When she awoke just after dawn, his bed was empty. Tiaan dressed, glorying in her own clothes again rather than those hideous, confining gowns, and breakfasted on stew, rice and mint tea. Only then did she notice the chalk scrawl on a broken piece of slate near the door:
Gone down mine. Back by lunch. Keep a careful lookout, just in case. I left you a few old things. They were my wife’s.
On the bed lay a jacket and overpants lined with fur and filled with down, and a sleeping pouch of the same material. They were better quality than anything she had. Tiaan thanked him silently.
The Tiksi watch could be looking for her right now. She packed, including one of the sheets. You never knew when a rag might come in handy. Knowing Joeyn would not have her set out on the road with nothing to eat, Tiaan wrapped a stale loaf, the partly used leg of corned goat, a handful of rice balls and a lump of cheese, and shoved them in as well.
Rubbing off his note she wrote her own, a simple Thank you, Joe. Her preparations completed, Tiaan checked outside and slipped into the forest. She climbed a tree that had a view of the path and the village, and waited.
It was a clear, windy morning and the wind intensified as the day wore on, shaking the walls of the hut. It was exposed in her tree; Tiaan was glad of her new clothing. Nothing happened, except for occasional people passing up and down the path. Noon came and went. Joeyn did not appear. Anxious now, she went back to the hut for bread, cheese and water, then resumed her watch.
A long time afterwards, when Tiaan was beginning to think she should go looking for Joeyn, a short man appeared, striding down the path as if he owned it. He wore the uniform of an artificer. It was the detestable Nish.
Could he be looking for her? News of her escape would have reached the manufactory by now. Her discarded garments were under Joeyn’s bed but there was nothing she could do about them.
Joe had not appeared. She set off for the mine at a trot, trying to leave as few tracks as possible. There was no one in sight as she darted across the open ground and inside the adit. Lex was in his cavern, tallying quotas of ore on a slate. Crouching low, she made it past unseen, took a full lantern from the rack, lit it and hurried to the lift. She got into the basket and wound herself down to the sixth level.
Tiaan stepped out of the basket and took off the brake. If someone came after her, and thought to look, they might tell which level she’d gone to by the markings on the lift rope. Nothing she could do about that either.
Holding her lantern high, Tiaan made her way down the tunnel, praying that Joeyn was here. There was always the chance that she’d missed him, or he’d gone up to the manufactory first. Thus preoccupied, she did not give a thought to the unstable areas as she passed under them. What a change from her first time.
Not far now. She negotiated a tight squeeze, a gentle curve, and ahead were the triple dead ends. In her withdrawal Tiaan could sense the field strongly. She would tear crystal out of the rock with her teeth if there was no other way to get one. She ran forward, then stopped. The middle end was piled with rubble that had half-buried the props. Part of the roof had collapsed.
She moved forward slowly, hoping against hope. It could have fallen any time in the last two weeks. Then, as she swung the lantern, Tiaan saw a battered boot sticking out from under the rocks. She clutched at her heart.
‘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?’