The Queen's Quarry

by Frank Morin

  Connor scowled at the man. “It’s not out of the question in your case.”

  Rory added, “You think rule comes from maintaining a stranglehold over people, but trusting people accomplishes so much more.”

  Craigroy’s expression turned crafty. “So trust me, Rory. Let me go with them.”

  Rory barked a laugh. “I trust people, but I’m not an idiot. No, you’re far too dangerous to release. You’ve won new quarters in the prison.”

  “Wait,” Connor interrupted before Craigroy could protest. “First you take me to the cache of porphyry.”

  Ivor hesitated. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “I don’t plan to use it, but I don’t plan for anyone else to get the chance either.”

  Craigroy gave Connor a knowing smile. “Of course you won’t. Fine, boy. You’ve proven yourself exceptionally resistant to porphyry, but you’ll fall eventually. Then you’ll kill these fools, break me out of my cell, and swear fealty to get the powder you’ll need to survive.”

  “You never give up, do you?” Ivor asked with grudging respect.

  “Never. That’s why I always win in the end.”

  Rory said, “I hope that thought helps keep you warm at night. I hear the dungeons are chilly.”

  “Such a pity. You were a great man, Rory. I hate to see you fall,” Craigroy said.

  “Not the way I see it.”

  “Come along then,” Craigroy said brusquely, turning toward the palace and striding away. Connor and a pair of soldiers assigned to watch Craigroy had to hurry to keep up. “I believe the dungeon may get many new residents today. I know those cells, and I plan to get one of my favorites before they’re all filled up.”

  “You’re taking this awfully well,” Connor commented as they strode into the main hall.

  “You don’t survive high-stakes political intrigue as long as I have without learning that you control far less than you imagine. Flexibility is the key to survival.”

  “I’ll remember that.” He never would have imagined Craigroy might offer good advice. That whole be-my-slave-or-die mentality tended to get in the way. Maybe he liked motivated slaves.

  They climbed to Craigroy’s office, a plush set of rooms high atop the central tower, only two levels below Dougal’s own private office. The man snatched up several articles of clothing and a pillow.

  Connor watched him closely, and the Boulders who would escort him to his jail cell made a point of checking those clothes to ensure no power stones were concealed in the pockets. They seemed innocent enough.

  In a cramped little closet full of old files and dusty paperwork, Craigroy slid aside a panel in the back wall and extracted an iron-banded box. He hesitated for a moment before passing it to Connor.

  “This box might as well hold chains around your heart, boy. I don’t care how strong you are. No one survives the transformation without losing pieces of their humanity. Soon nothing is left but the fury and insanity.”

  “You’re waxing pessimistic. Not the best mental state to begin a jail sentence,” Connor said, taking the box and carrying it to a table.

  Craigroy grimaced. “Do you have to remind me?”

  “Absolutely. You plotted to kill me, so I get to enjoy your failure every minute.”

  “I knew I didn’t like you, boy, and that was before I knew you.”

  “The personal connections are the most meaningful.”

  Connor unfastened the latches and threw open the lid. Inside he found ten leather pouches, all carefully tied, each containing about a pound of porphyry powder.

  “That’s it?” He’d expected a lot more.

  “The supply is small to begin with, and High Lord Dougal strictly manages production. He alone knows where it’s quarried.”

  Connor didn’t believe him, so he slipped his hand into his belt pouch and touched a piece of chert. Immediately he felt a chill across the skin of his arm closest to Craigroy. The man was hiding his shock at the abrupt reversal of his fortunes pretty well, and his thoughts remained fuzzy and elusive. Craigroy had learned how to shield himself somehow. Connor really needed to learn that technique.

  The shielding wasn’t perfect, though, and Connor picked up whispers. Craigroy was definitely committed to destroying him and the revolution. He was frustrated that the truth had been revealed to so many and annoyed by how much work it would take to put things right.

  Unfortunately, Connor got no sense about whether or not Craigroy knew where to find more porphyry. It didn’t matter in the immediate future. Only Connor could tap it, and he didn’t plan to use it unless he found himself facing Harley or the queen herself.

  He closed the lid and said, “Good-bye, Craigroy. The next time we meet, I’ll most likely have to kill you.”

  Craigroy chuckled without humor. “The next time we meet, I’ll own you.”

  “Get out,” Connor growled, pushing Craigroy toward the door and carrying the chest of porphyry after.

  He watched as the two burly Boulders led the old spymaster toward the exit, wondering if they’d made the right decision in letting him live. They might need more information from him. Once Connor found more time to practice with chert, he might be able to defeat Craigroy’s mental shielding. No doubt the man possessed critically important information.

  So he returned to the square. The city was in tumult as soldiers fled before the deadline, while other companies monitored their progress suspiciously. The air was filled with a strange combination of exultant celebration and nervous worry, but no open fighting had started yet.

  He eventually found Rory and Ivor in Rory’s office. He showed them the porphyry.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Rory asked. He looked like he wanted to toss it into the fire.

  “You should destroy it,” Ivor said.

  Connor shook his head. He was pleasantly surprised that he hadn’t suffered any major craving since transforming back. He’d purged the last bit of porphyry from his system after leaving Craigroy’s office and he didn’t plan to ever use it again. At the same time, he felt a dangerous reluctance to destroy this last known stash.

  He’d mastered the beast. Could he do it again? He wouldn’t admit to either of them that he was tempted to try. He hesitated even admitting that truth to himself, but luckily it was a bridge he didn’t have to cross yet.

  “I’ll bring it to Faulenrost. I’d like the Builders to study it and see what else they can learn about it.”

  Rory said, “Keep it tightly controlled. That powder is dangerous.”

  Connor knew that better than anyone.

  Rory leaned back in his chair and frowned at Connor. “Have I told you yet that we weren’t ready for this revolution?”

  “You’ve thrown the whole plan on its head,” Ivor added grumpily.

  “No, I gave you what you needed.”

  “Panicked, sleepless nights?” Rory asked.

  “Witnesses. You said one of your biggest hurdles was convincing people that unclaimed are false. Today I gave you over twenty thousand witnesses. They saw me transform and they saw me return, and thousands of them are leaving. Whether or not they support the revolution, they’ll tell people what they saw and that will help.”

  “You realize you actually sound like maybe you thought this insanity through before you jumped out the window?” Ivor asked with a slow shake of his head.

  “I think before I act,” Connor said.

  “Sometimes,” Ivor acknowledged.

  Rory sighed. “We’ll work with it. We need to move fast, regardless of how you look at things. So far Nevan is cooperating. Torcall may cause issues, but when he realized I didn’t plan to execute them all, he settled down. Lord Logan might actually join our cause enthusiastically.”

  “He seemed pretty excited in the square,” Connor said.

  Rory nodded. “He’s very wealthy, but has no affinity. His town has a very productive gold mine, but no quarry. I think he sees our revolution as the chance to finally get th
e respect he’s always wanted.”

  Ivor said, “We’ll work that angle. I’d love to have active support from Nevan too. He’s very skilled. On the broader front, I’m already sending Striders to all our contacts in every city. I’ve got some agents embedded in the forces leaving the city. They shouldn’t have any trouble getting accepted into our enemies’ camps since they walked away from the revolution when they had the chance.”

  That was clever even for Ivor.

  He continued. “We’ll work with Ailsa’s intelligence network to push the information faster through Guardian ranks. We need to secure allies before the high lords can seal off access.”

  Rory said, “They’ll send an army. We’ll need reinforcements.”

  “I’ve got to get back to Granadure to speak with Kilian,” Connor reminded him. “I’ll see if he can send help.”

  Rory sighed. “That’s good, but come back soon, lad. We’ll need you.”

  “As soon as I can.” Once he stabilized his affinities.

  “Do me a favor,” Rory said, suddenly looking nervous.

  “Of course.”

  “Will you invite Anika to come for a visit?” His face reddened as he spoke. That look did not sit well on the stony-faced general.

  Connor grinned. “I’d be honored.”

  Ivor rose. “Very well. I’ll leave you to secure the city, Rory.”

  “Tomas and Cameron are overseeing the evictions to make sure we don’t end up with a revolt. I promised to send a small allotment of tertiary stones along with those who are leaving, if they all leave peacefully.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Connor asked.

  “It won’t be much, just enough to help them make the journey south. Not enough to go to battle, but enough to encourage them to play fair.”

  Ivor rose. “Clever. I’m heading to my new office to get to work.”

  Rory raised a questioning eyebrow. “New office? Whose did you confiscate?”

  “Craigroy’s, of course,” Ivor said with a grin.

  “I should have known. It’s one of the best.”

  “Why do you think I chose it?”

  56

  Sometimes You Get to Live Up to Your Reputation

  Jean stared into a fascinating, invisible world of tiny proportions, so enthralled she barely dared to breathe for fear of shaking the delicate focus and ruining the image. She leaned over a work table in a corner of her office, elbows pressed against the surface to brace her view as she held the newest near-vision goggles to her eyes and stared in wonder.

  “This is amazing,” she breathed for the tenth time. “I never imagined mold could look beautiful.”

  Karlmann, the Healer, sat in a chair beside her, craning over the table with a second pair of the goggles. He muttered with abundant frustration in Grandurian, “I can’t get it to focus. My hands are too shaky.”

  Jean’s fluency was progressing rapidly and she could understand most of what he said.

  “We’ll have to secure the goggles onto a base to stabilize the view,” she promised, not taking her eyes off the incredible sight.

  A tiny sample of mold sat on a flat piece of quickened limestone on the table, magnified hundreds of times through the marvelous goggles. She felt like her vision was plunging down and down until the tiny piece of mold filled her gaze. With her normal vision, the mold looked a bit fuzzy and completely unremarkable. Through the near-vision goggles, it looked like a fantastic forest, complete with flowering stems, slender stalks, and oval-shaped seeds.

  She was the first person to ever peer into that tiny world, and that feeling of pure discovery sent a chill sliding down her spine. With her many other administrative duties, she missed far too much of the wonderful work of discovery happening all across Faulenrost in the barns and improvised workrooms. Now she no longer envied the other researchers.

  “Please, tell me what you see,” Karlmann urged.

  Jean wrenched her gaze away from the mold and tried to explain, but realized it would be simpler to ask Dierk and his team to add a base to the goggles for the old Healer.

  They’d be happy to help. Once they’d figured out the trick to making the near-vision goggles work, they’d finally understood the brilliance of her plan.

  Hamish had offered the suggestion that paved the way for the breakthrough. Even though he’d spent so little time with them, his brilliant inventor’s mind had seen what she hadn’t.

  Karlmann examined the goggles closely. “I still can’t pretend I understand how this works.”

  “It’s so new, I doubt any of us understand all the ramifications,” Jean admitted.

  Hamish’s idea had been so simple, but still so hard. Quickened quartzite worked best magnifying a view across a flat area, which worked great for wide vistas, magnified ten or twenty times. But they needed to magnify tiny things hundreds of times, and they hadn’t figure out how to focus the quartzite properly.

  Hamish had asked, “Can’t we bend the view somehow to focus it tighter?”

  That idea provided critical, especially when Jean had noticed a magnifying lens used by one of the Althing researchers. That had given her the insight she needed to figure out the new goggles.

  Now she pointed to the curved lenses on each end of the goggles. “We use these to help bend the light shining up through the sample. We run that image through four sets of quickened quartzite, each increasing the magnification five-fold. Using that combination is far more stable than anything we’ve tried so far.”

  She felt impatient to get the next iteration of the goggles complete so she and Karlmann could really study the mold, and hopefully begin to understand what made diseases work. One Althin research team was already scheduled to help. In their studies of chemicals, they already suspected that many aspects of life were simply too tiny to see, and they were excited to get a chance to start proving some of their hypotheses. She was happy to have them available. Their work would save her years of research and hopefully kickstart the understanding of infectious diseases.

  Karlmann rose and rubbed his back. He gave Jean a warm smile. “It appears you are once again on the verge of making the impossible a reality. Well done, my dear. I only wish I was a few years younger so I could keep up with you. I suspect the pace of our research is about to accelerate exponentially.”

  She took his hand and escorted him to the door. He was such a good-hearted man. She loved the chance to work with him and benefit from his many years of experience. “I doubt we’d make half as much progress without your wisdom guiding our path. I’ll inform you the moment the new prototypes are ready.”

  After he left, she allowed herself to drop into an overstuffed chair near her crackling fire and savor the moment. Right then, her little office felt more like a Builder shop than an administrator’s workplace.

  She smiled when she realized she’d thought of her office as little. It was almost as nice as Lord Gavin’s personal study in Alasdair. She’d never lived in such finery and she felt a little ashamed at how quickly she had grown accustomed to it.

  As she held her hands out to the fire, she thought of Gran and wished she could share the marvelous days with her. She’d long dreamed of opportunities to learn and to challenge her mind. Now that she was nearly drowning in those challenges, she wondered how long she could keep up the pace. So many people were relying on her to lead and to make decisions, but she felt so inexperienced. All she could do was follow her heart and stay true to the principles Gran had taught her.

  Bruno’s heavy knock on the door interrupted her reverie. His huge hands simply couldn’t knock softly, so even a polite tap shook the door like he was trying to knock it off its hinges.

  “Come in,” she called.

  Bruno entered. In his big winter coat, he looked like a bear. He bowed a little as more and more people were doing of late, despite how often Jean reminded them she was still just a commoner.

  She gestured him to join her by the fire, and the large chair he chose c
reaked under his bulk. She spoke in Grandurian before he could initiate a conversation in Obrioner. They vied for opportunities to practice each other’s language.

  “I’m glad you stopped by. I haven’t had time to review your latest report, but I prefer to hear about your progress in person anyway.”

  Bruno loved working with the Builders and he’d assumed the unofficial position of supervisor of the many teams working on the various components of the enormous armored mechanical they were building for Hamish. He’d taken to calling it the Juggernaut.

  “The armor is stronger than we hoped. The components are progressing rapidly. The Althin draftsman is struggling to keep the specifications current.”

  “Good. Tell me about it,” she encouraged, and decided she’d make time to tour the various workrooms personally tomorrow.

  Bruno explained how they were using both quickened granite and steel to create the curved outer shell of the spherical Juggernaut.

  Jean frowned and interrupted. “The quickened granite is very hard, so that’s a good choice, but could a powerful Sapper or Sentry manipulate it?”

  Bruno shook his head. “Dierk tested that theory. Most Petralists lack ability to walk with solid stone. Even if Hamish faced one who could, it appears that by quickening the stone, its power is engaged and inaccessible to Petralist manipulation.”

  “Really? Is that principle true across all power stones?” What an intriguing idea.

  “I don’t know, but I’ll make a point to assign a team to research that.”

  “Thank you. Keep me posted on developments, please.” Jean grabbed her ever-present notebook from the nearby table and jotted a note. Then she said, “Sorry for the interruption. Please continue about the armor.”

  Bruno explained that individual sections were being developed to house various weapons that would drive through movable joints. Another team was working on a flexible harness to suspend Hamish in the center, where he would control all the various thrusters and components. The harness would turn to keep Hamish upright, even while the sphere rolled.