Harland lifted his arms. “We’re diggers, ain’t we?”
“Don’t make you Union.”
Harland’s smile slipped. “You heard of a man named Jericho Burgess?”
Patrick faltered. He couldn’t fathom the question. “Can’t say I have.”
“Ah, well, young Jericho were a devoted Union man. A good miner, too,” Harland said, something rearing up between the words.
Harland didn’t say more, and Patrick knew better than to try and fill the silence. Better to let the oaf turn the cards over himself.
But Harland didn’t offer an explanation. Instead, he took a swig of his lager, then tried a different route. “Union ain’t rendered much help to us in these parts,” he said with no small amount of bitterness. “But we certainly ain’t bendin’ the knee to the coppers.”
“Speakin’ of which,” Patrick noted. “Haven’t seen a single one.”
“They’ve been kept busy and content,” Harland grinned. “They’ve left Scurry in my capable hands.”
And Patrick wondered what it was that kept them content. Only so many good things a man could use before he resorted to the bad. “At dusk, our work is done.”
“At dawn we fight,” Harland intoned. “Though the fight out here ain’t been so successful. As you’ve pointed out, we’re short on bullets.”
“And what if I was to promise a loaded rifle for every man and woman in the parish?” Patrick asked, seeing the flicker of interest in Harland’s watery eyes.
The man chewed his tongue for a moment, then said, “I’d call you a ruddy swinder. We hear the whispers, Colson. The Union’s gone belly-up.”
“Whispers tend to be just that,” Patrick countered. “Nothin’ more.”
“Heard other things, too,” he said. “Like how you’re workin’ for the House now,” he said. “Made some kind of truce pact.”
Patrick clicked his tongue. “The House grows more desperate by the day,” he said. “They’ll say anythin’ to cause division. They can always rely on the least intelligent to fall for the scam.”
“Are you sayin’ you ain’t the Alchemist, then?”
“Oh, that I am,” Patrick said, nodding. “I’m sayin’ I’ll beyourAlchemist, if, indeed, you’re a man to be trusted.”
Harland laughed, but there was a shiver of something passing over him, too—greed. “So his lordship falls off a train, and now you want to bemyAlchemist, eh?” he said. “You hopin’ to find some terranium here, boy?”
“Already found it,” he said. “Just need a few miners to help us bring it up.”
Another man shook his head, backed away a step. “We’ve mined every crevice of this fuckin’ place,” he said.
“Noteverycrevice,” Patrick countered. “The far east tunnel. If we mine down and due east, I believe we’ll find more terranium than you’ve ever seen.”
But the men were already shaking their heads. Harland grunted. “We don’t mine no further in, boy.”
“Why?” John asked, his brow furrowed.
“?’Cause we’d be minin’ beneath town proper,” he said. “And if there’s an explosion—which there surely will be—then the whole bloody parish caves in.”
This explained, at least, why Idia’s Seam had never been found. It was buried beneath Scurry itself.
“And what if there was a way to mine it around the gas?”
Harland frowned. “You got a way to sniff the gas from the other side of a dirt wall?”
“No,” Patrick said. “I got a way to break through the rock without dynamite.”
When no recognition dawned, and one confused face turned to the other, Patrick nodded to Nina. “This is Nina Harrow, boys,” he said. “Formerly known as Nina Clarke. The earth Charmer.”
