“No.” Grace slung the coat over her arm and beat a hasty retreat. The bell clanked behind her, and she stood on the pavement.
It clanked again when Derrick came barreling after her a moment later and spun her around to face him. “What was that?”
Cold air hit her face, nipped at her lungs. She took one breath, and then another. “I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Have you tried apologizing?”
“She won’t even let me try! She wants me to stop worrying about her. To take even the thoughts out of my brain.” Grace shrugged, jerky. The careless gesture showed how little control she had. “I can’t. And anyway, I have bigger problems than Petra and her terrible boyfriend.”
Derrick glanced over Grace, eyes resting on the spot where her clothes covered a bruise in the shape of a boot. “Well, put the coat on. I’m cold just looking at you.”
The next few weeks passed in a blur. Whoever had designed the curriculum, Grace discovered, had done a very good job. She found that, while she still wasn’t very good with her hands, she had made passable progress in a variety of areas. Every night, she tumbled exhausted into bed and spared a moment to appreciate the various specialized artisans who made society work before dropping straight into sleep.
The morning dawned cold but clear, weak sun crawling over the mountains. She consulted her schedule for the day and found out that, instead of a packed schedule of doing and interacting, she had a simple tour of the local mines with some free time in the afternoon. The relief was palpable.
She lingered over a hearty breakfast of porridge and eggs, reveling in the familiarity, and left for the tour in high spirits.
When she walked into the mine, the air was heavy with sawdust and metal. Copper, iron, and aluminum assaulted her nose with every breath she took. She counted breaths, feeling like the cavern walls were closing in on her even as the wooden latticework held the opening firm.
Her steps echoed. The steps of everyone else in the tour echoed. The aggregate volume shouldn’t have resulted in cacophony, but it sat poorly in the pit of Grace’s stomach nevertheless.
She trailed her fingers over a wooden cross-beam. The best thing she could say about the tours was that they meant she didn’t have to cope with anyone other than the tour guide. The guide wore black, embellished with almost luminescent green scarves. She had swept her astonishingly pale hair into a long tail that swayed as she talked. It made her very visible in the darkness of the mine. Grace watched her skeptically.
“Welcome to one of the Arrosan mineral mines,” the tour guide said with a sweeping gesture that almost matched the broad expanse of her grin. She had to cut the motion short to avoid banging her hand against the rock wall, but the smoothness of the motion suggested she’d practiced it well. Grace hated her a bit less: it must be even more boring to give the same tour over and over. At least Grace only had to take it once.
“We can only show you the shallowest portions of the mine for time reasons,” the guide explained. “Miners can go much deeper using a rail system. The best are lauded as heroes, and receive commensurate rewards.”
She gestured at a funny path built of metal rails. Bits of wood held them at a constant width. “Using oxen to pull carts full of loads of ore has reduced injury in the mines by 20%, but it remains a risky occupation.”
As the tour wound on, Grace found herself wondering about the sheer amount of wood that the enterprise took. How did you translate exports into yards of mining scaffolding? Grace didn’t know where to begin, but she knew that she had seen barely a handful of trees since arriving in the city.
Maybe there were forests elsewhere that the Arrosans had plundered in their greed. She had never learned about them, but trees could be planted by the industrious, could they not? And the Arrosans were busily proving the extent of their industry in the symposium, whatever else Grace had to say about it.
She swallowed hard. It felt like the particulate matter was forming a ball in her lungs.
The guide was still talking, calling for the entire group to follow her into an even narrower passage. Grace queued with the throng, waiting for the tour group to arrange itself into a single-file line.
The mass of bodies rapidly heated the enclosed space. It combined all the worst elements of crowded social gatherings with none of the air flow. She took her place in the line, grateful that at least she didn’t have to stoop as she’d seen some of the taller people in the group do.
The crowd meant that she couldn’t even go quickly to get it over. Of course there were slow people in front of her: there always were.
She became slowly aware of a swelling murmur in front of her as she picked her way slowly along.
The narrow passage swept out into an enormous cavern. Strategic lights illuminated the tall ceiling and caused surface deposits of gold scattered over the ceiling to glitter. There were jags and crags of rock formation ringing the walls. A footpath flanked by small yellowy lights low to the ground veered off to the right. The far wall disappeared into darkness.
Cool air hit her cheek as she walked forward out of the passage. It still tasted weirdly like metal, but Grace found it fresh and welcome anyway. She stepped briskly away from the tunnel to let the others out.
As her eyes adjusted to the light, she noticed a glint off the floor several yards away. Water, Grace realized with a start. She took few steps closer, trying to get a sense of how much there was in the dim light.
The guide reached out and caught her wrist. “Please stay on the lighted paths. The caves can be treacherous.”
Grace squinted at the lake, and then resigned herself to taking her place in the throng.
Later, Grace would think they’d taken a lot of trouble to arrange things for maximum dramatic effect. It was a bit of a hard sell for commodities everyone agreed had value, Grace mused. Arrosans certainly had their egos.
She emerged out into the fresh air with a pounding headache. Even the weak rays of winter sun felt like a benediction after her ordeal. It was high in the sky, and a faint sensation in the pit of her stomach told her it was lunch time.
Never mind food, Grace thought, touching her pockets to confirm the jerky she carried by habit was still there. She needed to get outdoors and away from people. More to the point, the tour had raised questions.
Instead of following the group back into town, she deliberately missed the turn and kept walking. She could see the sun and charted a straight path by its position. Even if she didn’t find anything on her walk, it would get her out in the air. She would not miss the city on her return.
She increased her pace until her breath sped and her heart beat harder, and immersed herself in the rhythm of her own body. With each drop of sweat that beaded, she felt more like herself.
The ground sloped up and Grace kept her pace constant. Her path had led her into the foothills of the mountains. Good enough. It would keep her fit, keep her ready to meet whatever challenges appeared.
Trees began to grow on the slope, and Grace went forward, satisfied. She didn’t know much about the forests of Arrosa, but she was only on the other side of one of the smallest mountains that jutted into the sky behind the city. To Grace’s eyes, it only made the skyline more violently imposed on the earth. This forest couldn’t be so different from the forests she’d grown up in as a child.
Somehow, it was.
She’d hiked well over an hour before she let herself stop. It must have been five miles, and she was surrounded by perfectly normal trees. The pine foliage was still green. Skinny vines snaked up their branches, twined into the needles. She looked closer: the vines belonged some kind of wild pea.
She knelt on the carpet of rotting foliage to get a better look. It was late season for peas, and their shape was strange to her. She plucked a pod from its fine and split it open, saw the peas inside, smelled a familiar odor. The shape was strange, but the scent the same.
There had been worse lunches.
Ten minutes of foragi
ng later, Grace settled back onto the ground, ignoring the prickle of needles that formed the bulk of the leaf litter. Leaning back against the tree, she spread her handkerchief full of peas flat on the ground. She closed her eyes and ate on autopilot, listening to the sounds of the forest. Needles rustled in the breeze and birds sang. It almost felt like home, just for a moment.
She opened her eyes, and then it wasn’t.
It hit her abruptly. All the trees were the same age. She’d stumbled onto a tree farm, but it hadn’t been marked. In fact, since the trees weren’t in straight lines, someone had taken care to make sure it wasn’t obvious that this was a timber-making operation.
Spooked, she stuffed her handkerchief back in her pocket and shoved herself onto her feet. There wasn’t any mid-level growth, either-- no bushes and very few plants. She didn’t see any felled logs covered in moss.
Finding a secret tree farm raised more questions than they answered. Why hide a tree farming operation? Why would it be so far away from the edge of town?
She brushed herself off and made her way back the way she had come.
Now that she was paying attention, she could see that she’d stumbled through what must have been staggered plantings. The trees grew older the closer she got to the city. Eventually, she passed through a wide band of natural forest.
Definitely a hidden tree farm, then, and so close to the city, Grace pondered as the dirt under her feet turned to stones and pavements. She’d found the supply of the timber used in the mine shafts. From the size of the mine, it might also supply the charcoal to smelt the metal from the ore.
She rejoined the throng of people in time for dinner and let the chatter sweep her away as she pondered the question. Something had to be going on. She didn’t know what it was, but there had to be a reason they’d hidden the extent of the mines.
She drifted off to bed early. No matter how interesting the workshops were, she had a more interesting problem to tangle with.
She wanted time to visit the library to check some facts to see if any of her theories held water, but her scheduler told her she didn’t have another free period for a week. More than one instructor reprimanded her for failing to pay attention. Thoughts of what Arrosa might be doing with a secret stash of metal consumed her thoughts.
Finally, she was in her last class before a precious free afternoon: Derrick’s woodworking class. She’d insinuated herself into it after a disaster in the weaving class involving a broken loom and a rampaging sheep. It always tasted like home, and it was a reprieve from the constant barrage of new things. The opportunity to hone her skills had value, she reasoned, even if she wasn’t taking full advantage of the variety of classes that existed in the program.
The room was sunny, well-lit, and sparsely-furnished. Grace settled onto a bench hewn roughly out of wood. It was, she noted with some interest, the same pine as the pine in the mines. It had probably grown on that mountainside, sandwiched between peaks in the inhospitable mountain range that divided Arrosa and Geneana.
For all of the wood that was floating around, they could have just brought the mines out into the open, Grace thought uneasily. She pulled the half-finished staff from her bag and took a knife from the rack. Setting to work, she wondered how big the secret had to be that they used the wood products everywhere, but hid the actual tree farm. Maybe there was another one that wasn’t hidden.
A chip of wood flew off the staff she was smoothing and pinged across the floor, startling her back into focus. She stared at where the knife had stopped, bare inches away from her thigh. The blade had embedded itself half an inch into the soft pine. She knew better.
“Grace!” The reprimand flew back at her from across the room, where Derrick had his hands full trying to help a young Myriaran, who had managed to nick his thumb on the second day of class and was now very nervous around the knives.
“Sorry,” said Grace. She put the knife away and picked up some sandpaper instead. She’d neatly stowed her project in the her bag provided five minutes before the class period was up.
Derrick raised his eyebrow as she put on her jacket.
She gave him an apologetic smile, but she didn’t have time to explain. Slipping out the door ahead of the rest of the throng, she was out on the streets of Arrosa.
The cold air nipped at her face as she made her way along the cobbled streets, and she found that they were becoming more familiar. She only had to check the well-creased map she’d taken from her welcome packet twice before tucking it back into a little waterproof pocket of her coat before she reached her destination.
The library boasted the same shiny façade as the state building. It had snowed the previous evening, and the gargoyles welcomed her by belching a stream of sleet-infested runoff on her head.
The inside was ghost-quiet and nearly deserted. There was a long counter in a pale wood behind which a row of three stools upholstered in orange heralded the putative presence of a staff, but no one was sitting on them. They were also the only splash of color in the building. Walls stretched high and white to a tall atrium ceiling, and bookshelves themselves were of the same pale wood as the counter. Even the spines of the books clustered on the shelves were various shades of grey and black, the occasional embossed title standing out in striking contrast. She trailed a finger along a shelf containing an enormous encyclopedia, volume after identically bound volume stretching from ceiling to floor for a good six feet, trying to ignore the way the shelves loomed over her head. Unstained pine, she realized, the same pine that she’d seen in the mine. It probably came from the same tree farm she’d discovered.
It should have been impressive. Instead, Grace felt like she’d been caught in a blizzard. At a loss, she ambled through the stacks.
Rudy was at a wall at the far side of the library, a sheaf of papers in his hands and a notebook on a little table after. Every so often, he would pause and note something down. Grace gave some serious thought to skulking back into the stacks, but then he glanced up and saw her.
“Oh, hello, Grace,” he said, marking his place on the page with his finger. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
Bracing for insult, Grace replied, “Libraries are good places to find answers.”
Instead, Rudy smiled pleasantly. “I think so, too. What were you looking for?”
She cast about for something safe to say. I think your country is doing something shady didn’t seem like the best thing. He’d had an interest in the trade of metals, hadn’t he? “Now that I’ve learned more about Arrosan mining, I was looking for a history of metal trade. It seems like there’s been a lot of growth lately.”
Rudy ducked his head, feigning modesty. “Oh, nothing spectacular-- we were just in the right place at the right time. So you were looking for me, then?”
She hadn’t been, actually, but it was as good a cover story as any. “I hadn’t realized how advanced the operation had become,” she said, earnestly as she could muster. Did his family work in metal extraction? Casting about in her memory, she tried to remember what she knew about him. He’d always been a background figure, dim beside the bright shining hatred she had for Dylan.
He flapped a hand. “Just a few technologies coming together in the right place at the right time.”
Hoping she had it right, she settled a neutral comment. “It’s still very impressive. I’d love to learn more.”
A chime went off, and Rudy glanced over at a clock on the little table. “I’m so sorry, but there’s a dinner tonight. I have to run. Perhaps we could chat another time.”
“Thank you for taking the time,” said Grace automatically. She couldn’t help thinking of rows of pine trees, this edifice of pine furniture, of the sheer calculation required to rip as much wood from the earth per square meter as possible. It just didn’t make sense.
After a while she went and looked for the tax bill for Smithson’s mining.
She would admit that dusty ledgers full of columns of numbers often eluded her, but the numb
ers here were large enough to catch her notice. Rudy’s family was doing quite well for itself. She’d never given thought to how Dylan and Rudy had met, but the page in front of her gave her variety of reasons, all in neatly aligned columns.
There wasn’t, on the face of it, anything sinister about an extremely profitable mining operation married to a tree farm that just about broke even, Grace concluded, letting the book fall shut.
She left it on the table for the librarian to re-shelve and walked out the door.
Chapter 11
The moment her feet hit the steps, noise came back into the world, and she realized just how tomb-silent the library had been. No gentle rustling of pages had offset the noise-absorbing quality of the shelves of books. No one had sat reading quietly, as they did at home.
There had been no increase in metal prices at the bazaar in Coura, Grace reflected. And she hadn’t seen any more booths hawking the stuff, either. But the profits-- and the taxes-- had soared. So where was all the metal going, and who was buying it?
Without thinking, she turned down the corner to cut through the back way to the lodging house when a movement caught the corner of her eye. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she glanced sideways at a reflection in one of the big glass storefront windows. There were a trio of black-clad figures in an alley of a cross street. Recognizing Big Short, and Skinny from the other day, Grace quickened her pace.
Before she could pass them, they emerged from the alley to stand in her path. She couldn’t get by.
The boot print had barely faded, Grace thought with irritation. On the other hand, this time she had a staff with her.
Now that she was more familiar with the area, she could immediately tell where they meant to drive her: a stony courtyard just off the beaten path.
A fall could hurt any one of them as much as it could hurt her, but there were more of them.
Misfit Princess Page 12
