The Elemental Jewels (Book 1)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “We’re here to work,” Garrel answered in a low voice.

  “That’s better. What charges were you arrested on?” one of the men in the side chairs asked, his eye glittering with interest.

  “Pickpockets,” Grange spoke up.

  “We’ve got plenty of those,” the man at the desk replied, as the man who asked the question no longer looked interested.

  “You just do your work, stay out of the way, and expect to do me a favor when the time comes,” he told the two. “Other than that, enjoy your time with us. You’re dismissed,” he stopped looking at them, then picked up a cigar from the edge of his desk and took a deep draught on it as he returned to examining the papers on his desk.

  “Who are you?” Grange blurted out the question. “Why do we owe you a favor?”

  The men in the chairs looked up at him with dark eyes, and Grange felt the tension in the tent rise.

  The man at the desk waved them back into their seats before they rose. “It’s alright. He can ask the question.

  “There are eight prisoners here for every guard,” he said. “My name’s Matey. I control the prisoners in the yellow sector. My men keep things under control, so that the guards don’t get too stressed. If it weren’t for me and a few friends like me to keep things smooth, the reckless young boys like you would get mad over something, and there’d be a riot.

  “The guards would probably all be killed, and there would be chaos and trouble, until the new guards came, and they’d come in with the plan to kill everyone they could find,” he said as though explaining a patently obvious fact to a child.

  “So I keep things calm and the boys under control. In return, everyone here does favors for me when I need them,” he finished. “So that’s who I am – I run this place.

  “Now, go to your tents and get settled in. You’re wearing yellow, so you’ll be working tomorrow in the tunnel. Get your rest,” he said dismissively.

  The two boys turned and exited from the tent, then stood outside. The air at the high mountain altitude was chilly. “I’ll put my things in my tent, and you do the same, then we can get some food,” Garrel suggested.

  They parted ways, and Grange turned right to the tent he belonged to. He pulled the flap back and saw eight bunks stacked in the space, the same space that held only one bunk in Matey’s tent. There was a man sitting on one of the bunks.

  “Who are you?” he asked with brisk words.

  “Grange. I just got assigned here,” the newcomer replied.

  The man looked him up and down in a careful evaluation. “That’s your bunk there,” he pointed to a middle bunk with little space above it. “All the others are taken.”

  Grange placed his belongings in the confined space atop the thin mattress. “I’ll be back later,” he told his new tent mate.

  “Make sure you’re here before curfew,” the man advised, “or you’ll owe Matey.”

  Grange looked at the man momentarily, then shrugged as he turned and left the tent.

  Garrel was already waiting outside, and together they walked back to the spot where they had passed the open kitchen. A number of prisoners were lined up, so they joined the line, waited and moved forward, and received a slab of cold, hard, dry dark bread, hollowed out to act as a bowl for a sloppy stew mixture that was ladled into the opening.

  They took their food and returned to a slab of wood not far from the yellow sector, where they sat down and started eating their unappetizing meal, picking out the pieces of vegetable and small slices of meal with their fingers, then eating the bread as it soaked up the soup stock.

  “What are we going to do, Garrel?” Grange asked.

  “We’re going to hunker down, stay out of trouble, and figure out what’s going on around here,” Garrel said matter-of-factly.

  “What about an escape?” Grange immediately asked.

  “We can’t escape here, at least not until the spring. There’s nothing but wilderness all the way back through the mountains. You and I are city kids; we don’t know a thing about how to live in the mountains, especially in winter. Stay out of trouble, wait until spring, then make an escape,” Garrel advised.

  “What’s it going to be like here?” Grange asked in a low voice, dismayed by the prospect of a future in a labor camp.

  “We’ll find out,” Garrel sighed. They sat in silence, watching the people in the camp walk by. As the sun started to set, the air turned noticeably cooler, and they returned to their tents to climb into their bunks and wrap up in their blankets.

  Grange found four men already in the dim interior of his tent when he opened it.

  “Who are you?” one of them immediately asked.

  “Grange – my name is Grange,” he replied.

  “What did you do?” the man followed with a new question.

  “To get sent here,” he added after Grange’s moment of silent confusion.

  “Pick pocket,” Grange answered.

  “That’s as good as any, I suppose,” the man ambiguously answered. “I’m Tarn. This is Gren, Mark, and Rill,” he introduced the others. “The rest of the tent may or may not float in here tonight, depending on what they may be doing for Matey.”

  “Does everyone do something for Matey?” Grange asked as he crawled into his covers, anxious to warm up.

  Grange fell into an uneasy sleep that night, despite how tired his body felt from the terrible rigors of the journey to the labor camp. He was vaguely aware of men who entered and left the tent, but when a loud bugle awoke him early the next morning, he found no further men had entered to sleep in the tent.

  "Go get breakfast first," one of the others recommended.

  He sleepily complied, joining a long line to receive a meal much like the dinner the night before, except with lumpy porridge inside the bread bowl. As he ate, he waved to Garrel when his friend passed by.

  Before Garrel returned though, a guard roused him from his seat.

  "Get up and fall in," the guard barked.

  “But I just got here yesterday,” Grange unthinkingly protested.

  The guard uncoiled a whip that hung from his hip, and Grange hastily got up.

  “First day to work and you’re already on your way to the tunnel. Congratulations!” the guard mocked him. “Now, get in the line and follow,” he ordered.

  Dejected, fearful, and astonished again at how bad luck managed to multiple, Grange fell into line and trudged along behind the others. They walked through the camp to the canal bed, then turned and followed the towpath along the canal, straight towards a sheer mountainside ahead. Half an hour later, Grange looked in amazement at the steady stream of men who rolled wheelbarrows full of stone out of a dark entrance in the squared-off face of the mountain.

  “In you go,” the guard who had nabbed Grange ordered, and the squad of prison-laborers moved into the murky interior of the mountain. Grange stumbled immediately in the nearly complete darkness, before his eyes gradually adjusted and he realized that there were widely spaced torches placed in brackets on the walls. As they moved further into the interior of the tunnel they walked through sections where Grange heard constant dripping sounds, while the stone surface grew wet and slippery, and drizzles of cold water even fell on their heads.

  They passed a steady stream of men who were carting more stones out of the tunnel while they strode deep into the mountain.

  “How far does this go?” Grange asked the man closest to him.

  “It’s going to go all the way through the mountain,” the man answered in a low voice. “This is the highest ridge the canal has to cross, and the Tyrant’s staff plans to go through the mountain instead of over it.

  “We’ve been working on this tunnel for six months, and we’re less than half way through. Plus we lose a couple of men every day in here due to accidents or roof collapses or fights,” he explained.

  There was a ragged cheer from a work crew as the new arrivals approached.

  “This is your station. Relieve the previous
shift,” the guards ordered. There was a disorderly changing of personnel, in which Grange found himself holding a pick at the end of the line, several feet away from anyone else, facing the blank wall that was the next portion of the mountain waiting to be pierced.

  “Get to work, you scrubs! Get to work!” the guards started shouting. Grange could see little in the thick darkness at his end of the cavern, where the rocky surroundings seemed to soak up the rays of light that weakly reached him.

  He raised his pick and swung it, breaking a small amount of rubble free from the wall, with a loud clanking noise and a momentary spark. He heard the sound of the guards’ whips cracking somewhere nearby, so he raised the pick and swung it again, knocking more stones free. He set a deliberate pace, trying to preserve his arms and shoulders and back from too much effort too early in the shift, then stopped ten minutes later when a pair of men with wheelbarrows and a lantern rolled up and hauled away the stones he had loosened. He stood and rested on his pick, sweating in spite of the cool subterranean air, then resumed working once the wheelbarrows trundled away into the darkness.

  He worked for hours, his body quivering with strain by the end of the shift, his arms rubbery in their exhaustion and his back bowed with over-exertion. When he heard the arrival of the replacement shift, he gladly lowered his pick, and dragged it towards the source of the sounds, then was relieved to join the group of men who were sent marching back out of the tunnel.

  Many minutes later they wearily emerged into the darkness of the open night. The air was cooler than it had been in the cavern, compounding Grange’s discomfort, as he walked back to camp. He reached the cooking station, where there were only loaves of bread left, and he hungrily accepted one. He started gnawing on it as he walked back to his tent, desperate to reach his bunk and to fall into a state of exhausted sleep.

  As he pulled back the canvas flap at his darkened tent, a large beefy hand landed on his shoulder, then jerked him backwards and spun him around.

  “Matey wants to see you,” one of his stocky guards growled. “Where have you been?”

  “In the tunnel, digging,” Grange answered with a sigh.

  The man gave him a shove towards the tent next to his, where another bodyguard caught him and shoved him into the tent of the head of the shadowy organization of laborers.

  “I’ve been waiting for you all day. Where have you been?” Matey asked. He lay on his bed, visible in the light of a lantern, an attractive woman standing over him massaging his back, as Grange looked on in jealousy.

  “I’ve been working in the tunnel all day,” Grange repeated his answer.

  “You weren’t supposed to go to work. I have a job for a pickpocket, and I want to find out how good you are. Now, go to bed, and don’t go to the tunnel tomorrow. Come see me after breakfast. If anyone gives you trouble, tell them Matey has a job for you, and they’ll leave you alone.

  Go on, move along,” the man turned his head away from Grange, and motioned for the woman to adjust her massage to treat his other shoulder.

  Grange stumbled away, and was soon in his own bunk, where he fell into a deep, deep slumber.

  When he awoke, the other men in his tent were arising, getting dressed and making noise.

  “Did you see Matey?” Gren asked. “It’s better not to keep him waiting.”

  “His men were looking for you yesterday,” Rill chimed in.

  “I was working in the tunnel,” Grange replied.

  “The tunnel? How’d you get assigned to the tunnel? You’re lucky to come out of there alive,” Rill exclaimed.

  The men left the tent, with final admonishments to be sure to see Matey, while Grange slowly pulled his boots on, then stumbled out of the tent. He looked to his left and saw two guards at Matey’s tent watching him.

  “I’m just going to go get breakfast. I’ll be right back,” he explained, then hurried to the kitchen line to get his bread and porridge breakfast, which he hurriedly consumed as he walked back towards his tent.

  “Grange!” he heard Garrel’s voice call, and he turned to see his friend behind him.

  “Where were you yesterday?” Garrel asked.

  “A guard made me go with his squad to a tunnel in the mountain,” Grange flexed his right arm, still feeling the soreness in his muscles and shoulder.

  “Everyone was looking for you – Matey wanted to see you,” Garrel told him.

  “I’m on my way to see him now,” Grange assured his friend.

  “If he’s happy with you, life here could be pretty easy, Grange,” Garrel spoke in a low voice. “But if he doesn’t like your work,” the warning was left unfinished.

  Grange nodded his understanding, and then the two split apart, as they reached the row of tents. Grange took a last bite of his bread, then threw the crust aside as he jogged to the front of Matey’s tent.

  “Wait,” one of the guards gave a monosyllabic order, then went into the tent for five seconds, and withdrew.

  Grange started to step forward, but the man held his hand up to clearly indicate that Grange was not yet ordered into the tent.

  A minute later, a woman came out of the tent, buttoning up her blouse as she let the cloth flap swing closed behind her. She smiled brazenly at one guard as she patted the other on the shoulder, brushed past Grange, walking unnecessarily close by him, so that her body grazed his as she gave him a wink, and then she was on her way, striding through the city of tents.

  “Where’s my pickpocket?” Matey’s voice called out.

  “Get in there – now,” ordered the guard who had held him up before, and Grange quickly hustled inside the tent.

  Matey was standing with his back to the door, wearing a robe. He turned around when Grange entered, and gave the boy a quick appraisal.

  “Today, I have a simple little task for you,” Matey told Grange. “Over in the blue section of the camp there’s a captain who has a beard on his chin, and a scar over his eye. He has a lady friend who wears a piece of jewelry on her blouse – green, polished stones.

  “I want you to get that brooch for me,” Matey said. “Just a simple little thing.”

  “Does she wear it pinned onto her clothes?” Grange asked, sensing trouble already from the assignment. Picking a purse out of a pocket was relatively easy work – the purse would be loose and easy to remove, unless it was chained in place, the way Hockis’s set-up had been. But a pinned brooch on a woman’s chest would be difficult.

  “Well of course she does! She flaunts it everywhere. I know a woman or two who are very jealous of Fleutitia’s jewels, and I intend to make them happy,” Matey snapped. “Is there a problem?” he asked in an ominous voice.

  “No,” Grange paused. “It’s just that I’m used to working in a team, with a helper or two.”

  “Oh, for the love of the spirits! This is your moment to shine! You go out and do this on your own, and I’ll be very happy with you. If you don’t do it, I’ll be very unhappy with you. Now go,” Matey ordered. He stepped over to his desk and sat down, as Grange stood in his spot.

  “Go on, I said,” Matey repeated himself. “And when you come back, you better have the brooch with you.”

  Grange turned and fled from the tent. He walked quickly away, out of sight of the guards, then sat on a tree stump and tried to weigh his prospects for success. It was going to be difficult, he knew. He could try to boldly rip the brooch off the woman’s blouse and run, but that seldom succeeded. He could wait until night, and steal the pin from her clothes when she wasn’t wearing them, unless she happened to undress in the tent of the officer she apparently kept company with.

  Or perhaps he could find something to trade for the brooch, something that would make the job easier.

  He needed to see the target, he decided, to understand what his chances of success could be. And he wanted to be inconspicuous, which meant he didn’t want to wear bright yellow clothes as he strolled through the blue section of the camp.

  “Where is the laundry?” he a
sked the first person he happened to see, a guard.

  “On the western edge of the camp, by the stream. Why?” the guard asked.

  “Matey told me to pick something up for him,” Grange responded.

  “Going around the south end of the camp’s the quickest way,” the guard advised, impressed by the use of Matey’s name.

  Grange nodded his thanks and began circling around the camp as directed, noting the number of solid stone structures built along the fringes of the camp, and guarded by uniformed guards. He passed by one building, where a number of officers were sitting on a porch in the front of the building, taking drinks from a large ceramic jug.

  He passed on by, thinking that the jug might prove useful, and reached the stream minutes later. The laundry works were spread along the bank, with vats of boiling water and sluices that carried flowing water diverted from the stream for rinsing purposes. Long ropes were strung for scores of yards, holding drying clothes of every type Grange had seen in the camp, and even some he hadn’t seen before.

  “Matey sent me to get some clean clothes for his folks,” Grange told the first worker he saw, a ponderous man who was watching water flow over a large heap of clothing in one of the sluices.

  “Help yourself,” the man motioned towards the clothes on the ropes, without bothering to look, which was just what Grange hoped for. He moved into the maze made of cloth walls, unseen by anyone as the breeze made the lines of clothes sway gently. He picked out a green outfit of clothes slightly larger than his own, and pulled them on over his yellow outfit, then ducked over to the next line and found a blue set that was larger still, and pulled it atop the green.

  He then wandered into the guard uniforms and pulled one of them on as well. He had to look twice as large as normal, he knew, and the clothes were damp, giving him a chill. But he had a way to change his appearance quickly, which he knew he was going to have to rely upon to overcome the difficulty of stealing the brooch.

  He left the laundry and returned to the building where the officers were engaged in their early morning bout of drinking, and he walked confidently up to the porch. Hockis had taught him that the key to success was to show no fear or hesitation or evidence of nervousness when carrying out the pickpocketing scam, and Grange instinctively knew that the same principal applied to the bit of thievery he was attempting to accomplish.