Lord Shop smiled. “I am taking the den while the animals fight.”
Theo shifted uncomfortably. His father grasped his shoulder as he passed, a warning.
“Lord Tanner is a wolf,” Shop continued. “He’s grown preoccupied by the blood. It has distracted him from more important business.”
“Findin’ ink,” Patrick murmured, a headache brewing.
“Indeed. Even with the earth Charmer finally in his grasp, he thought it prudent to send her out into the brink, rather than use her where she is most needed: unearthing new terranium.”
“Swanks think of people as nothin’ but tools,” Patrick said.
“She was a tool for you, too,” Theo parried.
As he was for her. “So, you’ll use Nina to dig, and me to siphon the ink, and in return you’ll offer us what? Nice accommodations?”
Lord Shop turned grave. “A truce,” he said, and it seemed a difficult word to utter. It was reluctant to escape his lips. “The terms of which can be negotiated by your father and you.”
Theo looked at his feet.
Patrick marked it.
“I would agree to a new order of Belavere Trench,” Shop continued. “Where a quota of children from each parish would siphon idium and be trained into the fellowship of their mediums. More Artisan schools could be built outside of Belavere City, a larger workforce of Smiths and Masons and Charmers in the next generation available to aid the brink towns. Bluff would be controlled. No premiums. It would mean less hawkers, less bad bluff on the streets—”
“Utopia,” Patrick said darkly.
“As close to it as we can manage.”
“You must’ve started shittin’ terranium ore, or he has,” Patrick nodded to Theo.
Lord Shop was undeterred. “This continent is rich in terranium yet.”
Patrick shook his head. The continent was barren, it seemed. The mines empty. “And you plan on workin’ Nina to the bone to find it, is that right? Will you have her move every mountain in the Trench till she keels over?”
“You think like a wolf, Mr. Colson,” Shop seemed suddenly impatient, as though waiting for a realization to dawn on Patrick. “Not everything needs to be gained by force.”
Patrick’s head tilted. It seemed the lord was on the cusp of something, some gloat he would not say aloud and undignify himself. A man like this did not prance about with ideas of treason if there were not a clear path to success, if the terranium he spoke of were not already guaranteed.
“You’ve found a seam,” Patrick guessed. He thought the lord’s eyes flashed. He appeared to Patrick suddenly ravenous.
“Not yet,” he said. “But I have found the surety that one exists.”
Patrick pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where?”
“Those answers will come in time Mr. Col—”
“Then you don’t know,” Patrick pushed away from the counter, paced into the center of the room and gave the lord his back. “You’re makin’ hollow promises.”
“I assure you, a seam exists.”
“Oneseam, when what you need is a dozen.”
“Not if that one seam is greater than any the continent has unearthed before,” Lord Shop made his voice low.
And Patrick turned on his heel. In Lord Shop’s face, he saw no deception. Only fire. “Idia’s Seam,” Patrick uttered. It felt strange to say it. A fable. A forgotten myth. “Bullshit.”
Shop presented his hands, a magician indicating no trickery was at play. “What else would I risk my life for, I ask you? Nothing less, Mr. Colson. Nothing less than magic for the next five generations.”
Nothing less than idium, which meant everything. “It’s a kids’ tale.”
