Patrick set the coal bag down and pulled forth the first piece of terranium. A substantial size. Bigger than he’d ever seen. He went out into the day, where the sun fought valiantly through cloud cover for just this moment, and held it high.
The terranium devoured light and revealed its true color: blue, like the deepest parts of the sea. A slow-falling night.
“Idium,” Patrick said with a grin.
The miners whooped and cheered. John came to take Patrick’s shoulders from behind and shook them. “We did it, son!” he brayed.
They had indeed.
Patrick took the rock between his hands and felt for the hollow inside. “Get your flask ready, Kicker,” he said.
The man emptied the flask of whatever garbage he’d been storing there and offered it to Patrick.
The terranium ore left his hand and hovered there in the sun, glinting blue-black. Patrick held up the flask beneath it.
The rock split down its middle slowly, as though the tip of a blade were tracing its equator. Separating cleanly, the idium within trickled out. It collected on the lip of the flask and plinked off its sides. Specks of it colored the dirt below.
But the flask was left with enough mouthfuls of ink for all of them.
Patrick stared at it for a moment, his mind already ahead of himself, picturing more victories in a long line. Dominos falling, one after the other.
He screwed the flask shut and threw it to Harland. “Your payment,” he said, and he didn’t miss the lust flashing in the man’s eyes, to be holding that which Crafters rarely did. “Hold up your end of the deal, Kicker,” Patrick said, pointing a finger at him. “Or you’ll see no more of it.”
There was still work to do, of course. More of the Seam to expose, and these men didn’t have a hope of getting to it without Nina’s help.
Patrick figured they’d return in the morning, dig out what they could and strut the tunnel—make it sound. With Nina tunneling miles in a day, they’d uncover enough to last them a few years or more. It would be up to the Scurry men, then, to harvest what they’d found. Tons upon tons of terranium ore to be picked from the walls and ceiling and shipped to Kenton Hill.
They dragged their weary bodies back over the tracks and up the hill, the Scurry miners pulling ahead. Patrick let them. There seemed little need to hurry now. All urgency had fled him. He wrapped his arm around Nina’s waist and took most of her weight. She looked up at him, covered from head to toe in dirt, golden hair turned ashy, and he wanted to kiss her like that, covered in grit and sweat. He had plans on bathing her from head to toe, of massaging every sore muscle in her body.
Scurry in twilight had never looked so charming.
He felt, for the first time since Kenton Hill, like he might be strangling some good from the world after all.
And it was upon this thought that he heard it.
Before they could make it past the first houses, there was a bang.
In the distance, some disturbance sent people running. Kicker and his crew hurried down the lane. A fountain of water spurted into the sky like a geyser.
“Now just what the bloody hell do you think that’s about?” John asked, coming up behind them. “Burst standpipe?”
Another went off farther in distance, matching the first, plumes of water in the air. And Patrick’s blood went cold.
“No,” he said. “Artisans.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONEDONNY
They arrived in Scurry after days aboard an overfull longboat, driven alternately by both Sam and Theo, the latter of whom stayed standing by sheer force of will.
In an unspoken agreement, Donny and Gunner minded Theo like wardens, but the boy seemed single-minded, determined only to reach Scurry as quickly as possible.
Donny shared his urgency. He’d picked the skin around his nails to shreds. The canals curved and turned inefficiently, rounding hills and mountains and other parishes. Pure torture. Tunnels, he thought, were far quicker.
But finally, on the third day, Gunner crowed as the empty docks of Scurry emerged. Scottie groaned in relief and cracked his neck. “May I never see a fuckin’ boat again,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Can’t stand the rockin, Don.”
“It’s a long walk home,” Donny answered. “Unless you plan on becomin’ a Scurry lad?”
“God, no,” Scottie grumbled. “You seein’ this shithole?”
