Chasm of Fire

by Michael Wallace

  “Is it getting wise to us, do you think?” Iliana asked when they’d finished with their fourth round at the letters. “That we can’t actually read their writing, and so it’s going to delay longer and longer so as to hold onto its secrets?”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Or we might be discharging whatever energy source powers it. It’s been down here God knows how long, and might not be able to display the message an unlimited number of times before it needs an extended rest to replenish its reserves.”

  That was sobering, and Iliana determined to finish it on the fifth pass. It had been a good two hours since they’d left the surface, and she was fighting the shivers from the chill. Another thirty or forty minutes and they’d better be on their way back to the mine surface regardless, or their oil would run out.

  The letters were rolling off her tongue this time, and she could see the gap narrowing between the first part of the text and the smaller part remaining at the end. By the time she had to stop reading from the end, she was only two or three words from having read off the entire thing. Unfortunately, the rolling line of vanishing text caught up to her spot in an instant, and she couldn’t quite get the rest of it before it was gone.

  She groaned. “Dammit, that was close. One more time and we’re done. The way it’s been slowing down, it’s going to take at least ten minutes of rest before we can restart it, though.”

  “No need.” Thiego’s tone was triumphant. “I got the last letters on my own. I looked at that part as you were finding your place reading backwards from the end, and scribbled it out before you started.”

  “Thank God. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Iliana was as anxious to get her muscles moving and warmed up as anything, and so she led them at a good pace back up the shaft toward the surface. Side shafts connected to main tunnels serviced by rail and hoist, and soon, clanking picks sounded from above and to their right, followed by a muffled boom that sifted coal dust from the roof. Someone had detonated explosives to knock loose another pile of the coal that had fed Quintana’s wealth for untold generations.

  And with luck, the work would continue for generations to come. They came upon several men laying rails to take carts down a new shaft burrowing ever deeper into the mountainside, and the workers straightened at the sight of the bobbing oil caps coming up from the depths.

  The miners turned up their own lamps, and filthy men, each so dark with coal dust that they looked like witherers, tipped their caps at Iliana and peered curiously at the cabalist accompanying her.

  Thiego kept looking to the sheets of paper, and when they emerged, blinking, past the nipper who opened the doors to let them into the daylight, his own coal-dust-streaked face carried a concerned expression.

  “Were you holding out on me?” she said. “Don’t tell me you deciphered it already.”

  “Not even close. But I’ve figured out a bit of it.” Thiego cast a look behind them as the mine doors swung shut. “Enough to worry me.”

  “Well?” she demanded.

  The banging of the breaker sounded to their right, with a belt spitting lumps of coal into a waiting train car, and a smaller belt separating the culm—rock and other debris—into a dusty pile. The train engine huffed, preparing to haul its load down to the cog rails that would carry it through the city and down to the Great Span.

  The mines were bustling, producing more coal than ever, the shifts working around the clock, the breaker boys worked to exhaustion, their pay increased by one brass penny per week to encourage harder work to keep up with demand from Basdeen, Dalph, and the coastal towns.

  It was hard to believe that all this had been shut down just a few months earlier. First, the artifact had practically destroyed the mines by spawning witherers, and then it had burst out in flames before soaring in a spectacular fireball past the Great Span as it descended into the depths below the city. The departing artifact had left the mine entrance a ruin and the coal seams themselves on fire. Yet somehow Lord Carbón’s engineers had drowned the fire, and Iliana organized a massive effort to excavate collapsed shafts, strip up twisted rails, and lay new tracks.

  Soon, production was at new heights atop the plateau, even while Carbón expended much of his mental effort helping the Torre cousins implement emergency repairs on the Great Span.

  Thiego turned back to Iliana, who had been waiting with increasing impatience for his answer. “I’ll make you a copy of the text before I leave you in the Quinta, and then take it back to the temple to translate. Meanwhile, find your master and ask him if he’s prepared to mount an expedition.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What kind of expedition?”

  “We’re going into the Rift.”

  Chapter Two

  It was late afternoon, and Lord Carbón and Anne Grosst—the Basdeenian engineer—had set up a far scope on Lady Mercado’s terrace. It was a good vantage from which to look across the Rift and inspect the point where the Great Span joined with the new support towers. But it didn’t escape Carbón’s attention that they stood less than fifteen feet from where Mercado had ordered a young man thrown into the chasm.

  Nearly six months had passed since the Festival of Fools, and a biting winter had given way to the soft warmth of spring, and yet standing here, listening to the wind whistle through the gorge below, he could almost hear Rodi’s screams, see the young man’s panicked, wide-eyed terror as he flailed at the air. Carbón was relieved when Grosst straightened, reached for her cane, and gestured for him to take a look.

  “There,” she said. “You can see the exact spot.”

  He pressed his eye to the scope, then twisted a knob on the side when Grosst explained how to bring the lenses into focus. He found himself looking at the cliff face below the far end of the Great Span, some distance beyond the support towers. A concrete surface with anchors had been fixed to the rock face, with arches stretching to it from the undercarriage of the bridge. The arches were clumsy compared to the graceful lines of the bridge—the work of a fallen age, after all—but it was still impressive. And it had all been completed in less than six months.

  “You see the cladding north of the towers?” she asked. “Good, now find that knob of rock, yeah? The one that looks like a giant’s nose.”

  “I see it.”

  “That knob is unstable, and it’s got to go. I need to blast it away and run fresh cladding over the spot, anchor it to the cliff wall. We’re going to go another sixty-two feet in that direction. Oh, and I may or may not need one additional support arch.”

  “Sounds like a lot of work.”

  “Absolutely. A lot of blasting, a lot of framework. A hundred tons or more of concrete, plus iron anchors. And that’s if we don’t need the new arch.”

  He felt a sinking feeling. “And you’re sure it’s necessary?”

  “Once you started running trains, I had your man Lozada test, and I don’t like the stress it’s putting on that north side. Every full train car increases the stress, and that will get worse once you’ve suffered a few winters, and the water and ice work at the cliff. Once that rocky knob goes, then boom. The whole support structure sags its weight onto the edge of the bridge.”

  “So it’s just a weight issue with the outgoing cars?” he asked.

  “The full ones, yeah. You could solve the problem by running half as many cars per train, I suppose.”

  “No way I can meet demand that way. And the way it’s going, we’ll soon need more cars, more weight per train.”

  “Exactly how I see it,” Grosst said.

  “Dammit, this is going to be expensive.”

  “You’re right about that. But you either pay for it now, or you come back for a much more expensive repair job in four or five years.”

  With another engineer at the helm, he might have been skeptical. It sounded suspiciously like a maneuver to gold-plate the project, to drag out construction another few months and keep the coin flowing. But during the project, the Basdeenian en
gineer had pointed out nearly as many opportunities to conserve expenses as to increase them.

  “Give me a figure,” Carbón said.

  “At least thirty gold quintas.”

  He looked up and studied her face to see if she was hiding anything. She met his gaze with dull brown eyes set on a solid, serious face. Even though Grosst had been hobbling on a cane since losing part of her foot to a witherer, she still had the solid build of someone comfortable swinging a sledgehammer or hauling fifty-pound bags of sand. More like one of her workers than the chief engineer of a project employing hundreds of men and women at any given moment.

  “Thirty,” she repeated. “Just so we’re clear.”

  After what he and Mercado had loaned or outright gifted to Daniel Torre, another thirty shouldn’t have made Carbón balk. But coffers had already been emptied to pay the thousands of workers, both foreigners and Quintanans, to complete—or nearly complete, as it turned out—the emergency repairs to the Great Span.

  He returned his gaze to the eyepiece to get a better view of the work she was talking about. The long, graceful arc of the Great Span had been uglified with the addition of the clumsy-looking towers on the far side. If the bridge had been created by artists from one of the plenties, using materials that seemed supernatural in their strength, the repairs looked like child’s work in comparison. Yet without the Basdeenians, even that would have been impossible.

  “Practically every bit of metal that glints has already made its way down the river and up the coast,” he said. “Your city must be bathing in gold and silver.”

  “And it’s coming back as fast as it ships out,” she said. “Except what the Scoti pirates skim off the top. We could save ourselves the risk by shuffling pieces of paper instead. Did you know that’s how the Elders did it? You pay us this amount, then we buy back your goods with this other amount. The coin itself doesn’t need to move.”

  “Talk to Mercado about that. She manages the minting of coin. Basdeenian coal shipments are increasing every month. What are you burning all that coal for, anyway?”

  Grosst started to answer, but was interrupted by a man clearing his throat. Carbón straightened again. Lady Mercado’s chief guard—a fellow named Mota—came down the staircase from the terraced gardens off the main house.

  Mota had personally thrown that boy into the Rift last fall, and Carbón still struggled to forgive him. He knew he should blame Mercado herself, not the tool who’d carried out her orders, but the woman’s absolute sense of justice was the same virtue—or defect—that had saved them in the end. Mota, on the other hand . . .

  He was accompanied by a man Carbón didn’t recognize, who wore the gray and gold of the watch.

  Mota nodded at the watchman. “This fellow says he’s got a sealed letter that’s meant for your eyes only.”

  “Thank you,” he told Mota, then cast a significant glance back toward the manor. “You may go back to your post.”

  Mota withdrew with obvious reluctance. No doubt, he’d wanted to pass along the contents of the note to his mistress, which was precisely what Carbón wished to avoid. At least until he knew what this was about; the watch didn’t typically deliver messages.

  Carbón took a closer look at the watchman. He looked at least thirty, and wore a mustache that turned down on the ends. That was a style common in de Armas’s forces, and combined with the man’s age, gave a distinct impression of someone who was of a military background who’d later fallen back to the city watch.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Anderos.”

  “And this letter wouldn’t happen to be from Lord de Armas, would it?”

  Anderos blinked. “Well, yes.”

  The watchman reached into his cloak and produced several sheets folded over and then closed with a green seal carrying a crossed musket and sword. Carbón turned it over, noting its weight. There was more here than a simple missive.

  “I was going to pass this off to your chancellor,” Anderos said, “but she wasn’t at your estate, either. Your staff said you’d be found up here.”

  “How long since you served under de Armas’s command?”

  “I joined the watch seven weeks ago. Can’t march anymore ’cause of a war injury, so I was drummed out of the army.” Anderos rubbed at his chest and winced.

  “An injury in your chest keeps you from marching?” Carbón asked.

  “Lungs.”

  Grosst looked unimpressed. “After that piece of treachery last fall, I’m surprised Plata took you.” She leaned against the balustrade for support while she scratched at her back with the end of the cane like a dog trying to root out fleas. “Unless you’ve all decided to forgive and forget.”

  “Not exactly,” Carbón said. He searched Anderos’s face for any sign of dissimulation. “But the watch is short of good men—Captain Plata has complained to me several times.”

  Anderos nodded. “There’s too much money to be made in the mines or working on the bridge.”

  “And you?” Carbón said. “Are you just that loyal to the city that you’d rather leave aside the good money to be found elsewhere?”

  “Nah, but I’m a soldier. That other kind of work doesn’t suit me. Hell no to the mines, and I’m not so keen on working with foreigners, neither.” He cast a side glance at Grosst. “Anyway, the pay’s good enough in the watch.”

  The pay was good enough everywhere. The same factors that had emptied the Quinta’s coffers had sent a surprising amount of coin down the hillside as well. Not gold—that was bound for the coast—but plenty of black coins and a fair bit of silver, too. Any time Carbón looked down at the lower terraces, he could see old, ramshackle buildings coming down and new ones going up. A few even seemed to be using stone in their foundations.

  Carbón couldn’t decide if he should let the matter drop with Anderos. Most likely, the man was exactly what he appeared, simply one of a number of old soldiers who had returned to the city when their bodies were used up and of no more use to the army. In addition to men like Anderos, the open positions of the watch had been filled by those forced out of the army by the demands placed on de Armas by the other members of the Quinta.

  After the fighting, Mercado, always devout, had refused to allow further moves against the Luminoso or to interfere in any other way with cabalist activities at the temple, which had left Lord de Armas to bear the brunt of her anger.

  De Armas had denied involvement, of course. He’d claimed that the attack was a rogue action by two of his lieutenants, and since the Espejo brothers were both dead, de Armas declared the matter settled. Enraged, Mercado vowed to strangle the army of funds, and de Armas in turn had threatened to march on the city. Carbón didn’t believe for a moment that de Armas was innocent, but thought their real enemy was Naila Roja, and couldn’t risk a civil war.

  He and Iliana came up with an alternative that would weaken de Armas, but allow him to back down without losing his position. They presented it to Puerto and Daniel Torre, and once the other two lords of the Quinta were in agreement, Mercado reluctantly dropped the matter.

  “When we stripped de Armas of five hundred men, the idea wasn’t that they would then be free to join the watch,” Carbón said. “That’s exactly what got us into trouble in the first place.”

  Anderos tugged nervously at his mustache. “I didn’t have anything to do with those plotters, Your Grace. I swear by the Elders, the first I heard about it was when it was over. We never left our barracks in Dalph before the whole thing had been put down.”

  “But you’re still involved enough with de Armas to be hand delivering his letters? How is that not a violation of the terms?”

  “That’s not what happened,” Anderos insisted. “A soldier rode across the bridge this morning, and Captain Plata wouldn’t let him into the city. Said that someone else had to deliver it, but the courier didn’t want to let go of it, and nobody dared summon a lord of the Quinta.”

  “So I suppose you voluntee
red out of the goodness of your heart?” Grosst said.

  The watchman looked her way. “No, but I knew the courier, don’t you see? I used to be his sergeant, I trained him. And he trusted me. He made me promise to hand it over without letting anyone but Lord Carbón or his chancellor set eyes on it. A cabalist escorted me to the Mercado estate when I couldn’t find His Grace at home.”

  “Oh, a cabalist,” Grosst said. “I suppose it’s all right, then.”

  Carbón wasn’t convinced, but having the engineer bicker with the watchman wasn’t getting them anywhere, so he turned his attention to the thick sheaf of papers. What could possibly have merited such a lengthy treatise?

  He broke the seal with his thumbnail, turned away from Grosst’s curious gaze—she was a foreigner, after all—and looked over the first page with his back to balustrade. Even if Naila were somehow present and invisible with one of her devices, she’d have needed to be floating above the Rift to read over his shoulder. The lettering was in the fine cursive they taught in the upper terraces, and a glance to the bottom confirmed Lord de Armas’s signature, if the seal hadn’t been enough to verify its authenticity.

  Lord Carbón,

  I have urgent news, and as the most reasonable member of the Quinta, I hope you will agree that it necessitates putting our differences behind us.

  A massive band of Scoti have landed raiding boats on the Cheksapa, killed those who resisted, and hauled away the others in chains. But this isn’t just another slaving raid against the fishing villages of the coast. The Scoti brought their women and children, too, and they’ve moved inland, even as more boats are landing. Word has it that there’s a war in the north country, and entire tribes have been uprooted.

  This may seem far afield, but any upheaval to the south while the army is weakened by your ill-advised reaction to the troubles last fall leaves me wary, and concerned that if Dalph is threatened, we won’t have troops enough to fight off a serious push from the south.