by Jason Fry
They were just finishing this simple lunch when Barnacle arrived.
“Lazy!” he cried out, striding down the tunnel and stopping so he towered above them, hands on his hips. “Layabouts and do-nothings, wasting the company’s money and costing me my bonus!”
Hodey and Jirwoh all but leapt to their feet, blinking nervously, but Stax quietly ate his last bite of bread before he got up.
“Oh, don’t bother getting up, Sir Stax,” Barnacle sneered. “Why not spend the rest of the day eating and snoozing while other people do the real work?”
Stax was curious how Barnacle had figured out the insulting nickname “Sir Stax”—did he somehow know Chigam and Ritzo from the caravan? He also thought that until just a few weeks ago, he had indeed spent most days eating and snoozing, and would have been perfectly happy returning to that life. But neither point seemed wise to bring up with Barnacle.
“Regarding your bonus, Mr. Barnacle, I’m proud to say we’ve had a profitable morning,” Stax said. “A fair-sized vein of coal located by Mr. Jirwoh, and a seam of iron found by Mr. Hodey.”
“ ‘Regarding your bonus,’ ” Barnacle said loftily, his voice rising in an imitation of Stax’s. “Mr. This, Mr. That. You don’t fool me, Sir Stax. Your nice manners are how you get away with doing nothing. What more might you have found if you’d kept working instead of throwing yourselves a carnival feast? Ever think of that?”
Stax started to defend himself, but Barnacle was already striding down the right-hand branch tunnel, his face turning bright red as he became angrier.
“Is this where you found the coal? Why did you seal these walls back up? What a waste of time! And for what? So the walls look pretty? I don’t know how they did things in your daddy’s mine, Sir Stax, but around here we don’t pay for pretty. We pay for ore and gems.”
Jirwoh opened his mouth to protest, but Stax shook his head.
“It’s not so the walls look pretty,” Stax told Barnacle. “It’s so—”
“—you always know where you are,” said another voice.
It was Mrs. Taney, her expression even more stern than it had been on the day Stax had met her. As Barnacle looked on with dismay, Mrs. Taney walked up and down the length of the feeder tunnel, then inspected the two branch tunnels.
“I see you’ve excavated the first branch tunnels, Stax,” she said. “How far down the main tunnels would the next ones be?”
“Eight blocks,” Stax said. “Then you bore tunnels parallel to the main tunnel. One eight blocks in, where the torch is, and another at the end of the corridor. Making a grid.”
“A grid where everything’s properly lit, with the minimum use of torches to accomplish it,” Mrs. Taney said. “Torches on the left, correct?”
Stax nodded.
“That way you can never get lost, even if you keep expanding the grid,” Mrs. Taney said, turning to stare at Barnacle. “If you lose track of where you are, you make sure the torches are on your right and walk until you hit a wide tunnel. That’s how your family mine operated at home, Stax?”
“Yes,” Stax said. “My father worked out the system with my grandmother.”
“They were excellent miners, then,” Mrs. Taney said. “Mr. Barnacle, this is the system I’ve tried to explain to you, not just once but several times. Let’s make this a demonstration project. Stax, I want you to mine the entire grid, using your system. When you’re finished, we’ll tally up how much time was required and the amount of ore yielded. The results might prove…instructive to our other crews.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Stax.
“All right then, carry on,” said Mrs. Taney, pivoting smoothly on one heel and marching down the tunnel the way she’d come.
Stax decided immediately that it would be wise not to cause Barnacle any more embarrassment.
“Mr. Jirwoh, Mr. Hodey, the three of us need to get back to work,” Stax said, clapping his hands for emphasis and pointedly not looking in Barnacle’s direction. “Let’s do that, please.”
Jirwoh and Hodey hefted their pickaxes and followed him farther down the feeder tunnel. But Stax could feel Barnacle’s gaze between his shoulder blades, burning almost as fiercely as the guardians’ from the Sea of Sorrows, and sensed more trouble ahead.
Jirwoh sensed it too.
“This is bad,” he told Stax, after a muttering Barnacle had left the three of them alone. “He’ll be after us every day, demanding to know why we aren’t delivering the kind of big bonus he deserves. Accusing us of trying to cheat him, or of being lazy.”
“We can’t worry about that,” Stax said. “All we can do is work hard and hope we hit some more rich veins. Which will happen, you’ll see. Haven’t we already found coal and iron today?”
“It won’t be enough for Barnacle,” Hodey said. “It hasn’t been since the Brandywine Hill Mine went bust.”
“Don’t say that name,” Jirwoh snapped, looking cross. “You know it’s bad luck.”
“Sorry,” Hodey said, and would have dropped the subject, if Stax had let him.
“What’s the Brandywine Hill Mine?”
Hodey looked over at Jirwoh, who threw up his hands in disgust.
“It’s just the other side of the eastern ridge,” Hodey said. “Barnacle promised the Taneys that there was a fortune in gems beneath it, and when they doubted him, he sunk a lot of his own money into it. Well, he was wrong. Ever since then, he’s been frantic for a big score to make their money back, and his too.”
“And that’s bad luck?” asked Stax. He’d known some superstitious miners in his day, and everyone knew mining was capricious—you could miss a vein of diamonds by a single block and it would go undetected for a thousand years. But while he’d heard of unlucky miners, the idea of an unlucky mine was new to him.
“I worked that mine, Stax, and it’s true,” Jirwoh said. “Day after day, nothing but stone. We must have taken out a hundred chests full of rock, with barely two pieces of coal to rub together. Never seen anything like it. So now we don’t discuss it. Besides, if Mr. Barnacle overhears the word ‘Brandywine,’ he goes insane and your next few days are unbearable.”
“Now, that I believe,” said Stax. “Tell me more about this mine. I want to know everything.”
Who is the Champion? * Stax makes a proposal * Osk’s inventions are found wanting
During his time working for The Tumbles Extraction Company, Stax had made it a habit to visit the general store every three or four days. It was a relief to see something other than the miners’ dormitory and hear discussions that weren’t about ore and gems, and he enjoyed Brubbs’s ready supply of news and gossip.
Every time he visited, Stax asked if Brubbs had heard from a traveler who knew the lands beyond the Sea of Sorrows. Every time, the answer was no. Until finally, standing in the general store and hearing this disappointing news yet again, Stax realized that the answer was always going to be no. If he was going to get home, he couldn’t wait for some knowledgeable ship captain to get him there. He would have to find some other way.
And the only answer Stax could think of was the one that frightened him: He had to find Fouge Tempro. Fouge knew how to get from the eastern end of the Sea of Sorrows to the Stonecutter estate. And, of course, he deserved to answer for what he’d done to Stax.
But while Stax fantasized about having his revenge, brooding over the compass Fouge had dropped, he couldn’t imagine confronting the pitiless raider. Over the last few weeks Stax had proved to himself that he could survive difficulties and dangers, and he’d remembered the craft of mining and adjusted to long days of hard work belowground. But those successes hadn’t transformed him into a warrior. He still had no weapons except a wooden sword and a pair of scavenged arrows, and he knew it would take more than that to survive against Fouge.
So it felt like a stroke of good fortune when Stax ove
rheard Brubbs chatting with a leather trader about someone they called the champion. Listening to their conversation, Stax sensed that whoever this mysterious entity was, he or she deserved a capital letter—not the champion, but the Champion.
As Brubbs and the leather trader moved on to negotiating the price of a shipment of hides, Stax realized he’d heard the Champion mentioned before a time or two, overhearing that name spoken by miners, customers in the general store, or locals at the caravanserai. When the leather trader left, Stax sidled up to the counter.
“You were just talking about someone called the Champion,” Stax said. “Who is that?”
“You don’t know about the Champion?” Brubbs looked surprised. “The man who brought Dark Ulric to justice? Who cleared out the creeper nest below the Splinter? Who sent the Mulraven Bandits fleeing into the wilderness?”
Stax had to shake his head.
“Oh, he’s quite the local hero,” Brubbs said. “Lives a week or so out of town, in the mountains to the east. Though I doubt he’s journeyed beyond the Sea of Sorrows, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No, nothing like that,” Stax said. “So he’s an experienced warrior, then?”
“Greatest swordsman of the realm, if the stories are true,” Brubbs said. “He used to come in here now and again, you know, though I haven’t seen him in years. They say he uses his castle as a base to explore strange realms: the Nether, even the End. Anywhere evil threatens good people, he’ll be there.”
Stax felt his hope rise. He liked to think he was good people, and he’d certainly had a distressing encounter with evil.
“So people ask him for help?” he asked Brubbs.
“They do,” Brubbs said. “Though I hear the Champion expects those who seek his help to offer what they can afford. Not for him, but so he can help others in need.”
“He’s a mercenary, then?” asked Stax.
Brubbs started to object, then stopped and laughed. “It does sound like that, doesn’t it? That’s a good lesson, Stax: Don’t assume your local heroes are everything legend says they are. But no, I don’t think that’s quite fair. It was a band of poor farmers who asked the Champion to run off the Mulraven Bandits, and I hear he agreed in return for a loaf of fresh bread each week. But when the royal twins of Far Nalur were kidnapped, the Champion retrieved the prince and princess in return for the king and queen agreeing to suspend all taxes until the children’s next birthday. That sounds like a fair outcome, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose it does,” said Stax. He thanked Brubbs and left the general store, deep in thought. He was trying to imagine himself journeying to the Champion’s mountain castle, and what this great warrior might say after Stax told him of all he had suffered at the hands of Fouge Tempro.
Stax reluctantly decided his case sounded a lot closer to that of the missing princes than it did to that of farmers plagued by bandits. Which meant the Champion would want a lot more from him than a weekly loaf of bread. He’d made a little money as a miner from his wages and bonuses, enough to build his credit back up at the general store, but nothing approaching a royal ransom.
Then Stax had an idea.
* * *
—
“You want to do what?” asked Mrs. Taney.
“Reopen the Brandywine Hill Mine,” Stax said. “I don’t believe it’s unlucky, or cursed, or whatever your miners think it is. I’d like to see what I can extract from it for you, using my system. Well, my family’s system.”
Mrs. Taney regarded him for a long moment from the other side of her desk, her gaze even.
“I embarrassed Barnacle in front of you and the others because I’d been trying to get him to listen for a long time,” she said. “Now that I’ve made my point, it wouldn’t do to make him look bad all over again. Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
“No,” Stax said.
“Then what is it about?”
“Justice,” Stax said grimly. “A man destroyed my life. I intend to make him answer for that.”
“I think you’d better tell me that story, then,” Mrs. Taney said.
So Stax told her about Fouge Tempro’s raid on his house, about being marooned, about his inability to find his way home, about the Champion. Mrs. Taney listened gravely, elbows on the desk in front of her and fingers steepled.
“I know about the Champion, though I can’t say I’ve met him myself,” she said. “So you want to enlist him to find this Fouge Tempro and defeat him for you. But to do that, you need money.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’re making money,” Mrs. Taney said. “The bonuses from the last round of excavations will be pretty good. And next month you’ll be on a gem crew, with the prospect of bigger bonuses.”
“I know. But I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“I see. In that case, stop being indecisive or unnecessarily coy, or whatever this is, and tell me what you’re proposing.”
Stax looked down at his hands. His palms had become rough and calloused from days wielding a pickaxe.
“I’ll mine Brandywine Hill on my own time, with any miners who’ll volunteer to work with me. You pay their wages, but not mine. I’ll work for free. Standard bonuses for the miners, and I get the bonus due a crew boss. You get your owner’s cut, of course.”
“Even if you can make that mine pay off like you think you can, it won’t be enough to hire your Champion.”
“I know that,” Stax said.
“And?”
“If Brandywine does pay off, you hire more miners and expand operations there.”
“With you as crew boss,” Mrs. Taney said. “Is that the idea?”
“That’s the idea.”
Stax waited while Mrs. Taney considered this. He could almost see her brain making the calculations and then double-checking them.
“I have conditions,” she said. “First, you work one four-hour shift a night, maximum. I don’t need tired miners making mistakes during their regular work hours. Second, it’s a three-person shift—you and two other miners. Third, you get the rest of the month to prove you’re right. No longer.”
Stax reviewed the calendar in his head. That gave him about a week. He winced but nodded.
“Fourth, Barnacle gets a miner’s cut of any bonuses out of your share as crew boss.”
When Stax started to object, Mrs. Taney put up her hand. “I know Barnacle’s a handful, Stax. I know it a lot better than you do, in fact. But he was with me and my husband at the beginning, when we were just two fools scratching in a hole in a hill. He’s been loyal to us, and so I’m loyal to him. He gets his cut.”
“All right,” Stax said, not seeing what choice he had.
“Which miners do you want to ask?”
“Cresop and Tanner,” Stax said.
“You can’t have either,” Mrs. Taney said. “They’re the first miners every crew boss asks for. I need them where they are.”
“Hodey, then.”
“You can have Hodey if you take Osk,” Mrs. Taney said.
“The little inventor? She can barely swing a pickaxe.”
“I know she’s not much of a miner, though something tells me she’ll work a bit harder for you than she does for Barnacle,” Mrs. Taney said. “The thing is, she’s smart. Which brings me to my final condition: I want you to visit her laboratory, out on the edge of town. I can’t figure out if Osk is a genius, a madwoman, or both, and I need a second opinion.”
“So,” Stax said. “One shift a night, I get Osk and Hodey, Barnacle gets his cut, I have till the end of the month, and first I need to go look at Osk’s crazy machines.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Taney said.
“Deal,” Stax said, and stuck out his hand.
* * *
—
Osk had the day off. All too aware
that time was precious, Stax got Mrs. Taney’s permission to visit the laboratory that afternoon.
He followed her directions to a little house on the outskirts of Tumbles Harbor, one that struck him as much the same as its neighbors, down to a little square of grass in front of it with carefully arranged flowers. Except instead of a torch or lantern for light by the gate, this house had a curious faceted cube.
“That’s odd,” said Stax, who hadn’t entirely broken the habit of talking to himself, though he’d mostly stopped doing it when other people were around.
He stepped onto the porch and noticed the house’s front door was iron, not the oak or birch he usually saw in Tumbles Harbor. Stax knocked on the door, startled by the metallic bang-bang-bang this produced, and waited.
Nothing happened. Stax rapped on the door again, and this time he heard a muffled voice from within yelling something.
“What?” he called out.
“The button! Push the button!”
Stax noticed a little nub of wood next to the door. He pushed it, heard a musical chime from inside the house, and then the door snapped open, nearly smacking him in the head. He stumbled backward and noticed the strange cube at the gate was now glowing a warm yellow.
Osk came to the door, wearing a leather apron marred by red blotches and streaks.
“Oh, hullo, Stax,” she said. “Didn’t you read the sign?”
“There isn’t a sign,” Stax said.
“There isn’t? Oh, you’re right, there isn’t. I forgot to put it up. That’s a nuisance.”
Osk returned a moment later with a sign that read RING DOORBELL, which she leaned against the outside wall of the house.
“It’s a redstone circuit,” she explained. “I can rig it to open the door, or to alert me down in my laboratory, so I can decide if I want to see visitors or not. I’m thinking of adding a pit in the porch. You know, for salespeople. Ha-ha, I’m just kidding, I’d get in trouble for that. Anyway, isn’t it great? Plus it makes the light come on, so you can see at night.”
