Page 14

THE TRENCH TRIBUNE

MURMURS OF STRIKE ACTION IN THE brINK

Speculation has arisen from the Northern mining towns that a strike may be forthcoming after a third mine collapse across the continent in as many consecutive days, as well as a gas explosion in Kenton Hill, tolling hundreds dead.

The information was offered by an anonymous Scribbler who allegedly wrote to the House of Lords, informing them of a number of unsanctioned meetings and even suspicions of a union for Crafter’s rights.

This coincides with other rumors of unknown origin spreading in the Northern and Eastern provinces, casting aspersions as to the legitimacy of Belavere’s siphoning ceremonies. Whispers suggest a possible link between such accusations and the rousing of a so-called union.

The Right Honorable Lord Tanner, however, assured this reporter that the racket is, in his words, “nonsensical.”

“The siphoning ceremony is a sacred religious ritual upheld for hundreds of years in our nation’s history.

The idea that the siphoning of idium has been somehow corrupted is impossible, and quite frankly, an illusion of the desperate.

Only Idia may bestow a man [or woman] with a faculty for magic, and idium cannot unlock what is not present. ”

The Right Honorable Lord also offered his sincerest sorrows to those in mourning after the recent catastrophes. “Long live those souls lost to us. And long live Belavere.”

T he words Kenton Hill seemed to leap from the page. They racketed around my head all the way through my classes, where I performed averagely aside from Headmaster Dumley’s private lessons.

I was in the first dregs of my second year at the Artisan school. I now spoke without my Scurry dialect without much thinking.

I’d never heard from my father. He must have assumed I’d become an Artisan when I didn’t return home that day. I wondered if he’d tried to pay a Scribbler to send me a note, only for them to fail to find a Nina Harrow.

It had been Theo who had handed me the newsprint at breakfast.

I was headed to Aunt Francis’s house before curfew, clutching the newsprint in my hand. She lived only a short way from the school, just beyond the National House, where she worked in the treasury, making coins from nickel alongside a slew of other Smiths.

At this time of night, the streets were slower, filled with music.

It floated out of windows and traveled on the breeze.

Insects chirped along, the water trickled by in its troughs, the city of Belavere always in complete harmony with all its working parts.

Whenever I ventured out on the weekends, I was reminded of why I’d so badly sought it in the first place.

Such things weren’t always so clear from inside the school’s walls.

Aunt Francis opened the door to receive me herself.

Her station as a Smith was not so high that she could afford servants, yet her terrace home was lovely.

It was humbly decorated with fine furnishings she proclaimed were family heirlooms. Her being the last real remaining Leisel made Aunt Francis’s home an exhibition of artifacts that I did not feel comfortable sitting on or eating off.

She was not the sort of woman who embraced another or even smiled too widely.

She never seemed particularly thrilled to see me, and yet there was evidence to the contrary.

There was always a plate of cake waiting and a teapot steaming when I visited.

She looked over my face and person before remembering to invite me over the threshold, as if searching for signs of harm.

She always, always asked a thousand questions about my classes, about my interactions with others, about any correspondence I might have received from Lord Tanner. I never told her about the letter.

I walked across her trim carpeted floors to the kitchen when she bid me to come inside.

“You no longer run to get to the cake,” she said. “Thank the heavens.”

I smiled a little for her benefit. I did not tell her it was because I no longer feared a skipped meal, or that somewhere between twelve and thirteen, I’d departed childhood.

We sat. She looked at me squarely. I looked at my fingers.

“How are your classes?” she asked first, then sat up a little straighter, if it were possible. “Are you progressing well with Professor Dumley?”

“Yes.”

Earth Charming, I’d learned, was a matter of weight and scale. The more there was to be moved, the harder it became. Professor Dumley said the magic was a muscle that would grow stronger with practice. But I was making fine progress—more progress, I thought, than he could quite believe.

Overall, I feared I was only a novelty. If it weren’t for the fact that I was the only living person who could charm earth, I would probably be of no consequence at all.

But I was an earth Charmer, and the title lent itself to higher praise than I was worth.

“Have you made any new friends?” Aunt Francis asked, and her eyes tightened.

“A few,” I lied.

“And… Mr. Shop?”

“Is one of them.”

She shook her head slightly with a deep breath. “I see his father often, you know. In the papers. Most believe he will be next in line if Lord Tanner ever relinquishes his position.”

I nodded. Swallowed. I had a sudden ridiculous fear that she might forbid me from speaking with Theodore anymore. “He doesn’t know anything,” I told her. “I swear it.”

Aunt Francis blanched. We usually obeyed an unspoken rule that we would not mention the ruse, even to each other, as though Lord Tanner himself were pressing his ears to the windows.

“In any case, it seems the House of Lords needs an earth Charmer more than it needs to right the order of things,” she said.

“Then it shouldn’t matter who my friends are.”

Aunt Francis’s cheeks flushed. She stood abruptly. For one wild moment I imagined her launching across the table and grabbing me by the collar, and my body curled in on itself.

But she did neither.

“Listen to me, Nina,” she said, her voice still low, if tremulous.

“Theodore seems like a nice boy. I know he has been… kind to you. But it remains that his father is a man in a very powerful position, and men like that don’t take kindly to frauds.

Particularly when they are found consorting with their children. ”

A fraud , I thought. Was that what I was? The word needled. “If I am a fraud, then aren’t we all? I only siphoned what the rest of you did.”

Silence, and this time, Aunt Francis was the one to avert her eyes.

We waded in dangerous waters. But I took my chances. “We are taught that all have the right to consume idium, but that only some are capable of truly siphoning its magic into their bodies. I know now it wasn’t true. But was all of it a lie?”

Aunt Francis’s chest had begun to heave, her eyes flitting to the windows and doors.

“Please,” I said. “I only want to understand, and then I won’t ever ask another thing.” I scooted so close to the edge of my chair that it teetered.

She clenched her fists, closed her eyes, then finally sat. She seemed older.

“I don’t know the answers, Nina,” she said.

“And in truth, I do not wish to. I only know what they told us when I took that position.” She sighed.

“The rest, I put together of my own accord. I think once, perhaps long ago, out of memory, every citizen was permitted the chance to consume idium… and it went very badly.”

I frowned. “How?”

Aunt Francis shook her head. “You are very young. Perhaps too young to imagine what happens when the means for destruction is placed in the wrong hands. But I believe it once led our nation to war.”

I frowned. “The Battle of Belavere is the only war in our history,” I said. “And it was fought against invaders. Outside nations.”

Aunt Francis shrugged. “We only know of history what is recorded. And records are easily lost or rewritten. I can’t know for sure. But the fact remains that at some point, our leaders thought it better that power be meted out only to those who could be trusted with it.”

I wondered how they decided who that should be. By what criteria were we judged? What lord had ever ventured east to Scurry, for instance, to scout these paragons of moral virtue?

Then, I thought of what they might find—a horde of vitriolic miners. What would a person like that do with the power to charm fire, for instance?

Aunt Francis continued. “Most children of Artisans become Artisans as well, as we all know. The lie is in letting the population believe this is the fault of bloodlines, much in the way a child of brown-haired parents will likely be born the same, but might also be blond. Genealogy is difficult to predict. It provides a reliable loophole, you see? When highborn parents have committed a crime or some other disgrace, their child tends to become a Crafter, despite generations of supposed Artisan breeding. The reverse happens for those Crafters whose families serve the House of Lords well. Their children are deemed Artisan, even if they are the first of their family to possess magic ability. If the intake of Artisan children runs low one year, then the next will see an upswing of brink children miraculously turned Artisan.”

“Do you think it’s right?” I asked her, something burning the sides of my throat. “That only the lucky few, the trusted few, should get to live this life?” I wondered if she’d ever stepped foot in the brink. I wondered if she had any inkling at all as to the streets and houses she’d find in Scurry.

Aunt Francis wavered. Her answer seemed to weigh on her chest.

“No,” she finally said in a quiet voice. “I am sure it isn’t fair. But…” She looked at me earnestly. “The House of Lords is charged with protecting this Nation, from outside adversaries and from itself. I wonder if that isn’t of higher import than what is right and fair.”

I felt us at opposite edges of a chasm; I dithered on the edge, wishing to cross it, but couldn’t.

I held up the newspaper still tightly rolled in my hand and unfurled it on the table. “Theo gave me this,” I said, pointing to the front-page article.

Aunt Francis stared at it with distaste. “Yes,” she said. “I read about it.”

“There was a boy at my siphoning ceremony. He came from the North.”

Her head tilted curiously.

“He… well… he was with me that day. When we found the vials. Except he—”

“He went home,” Aunt Francis guessed. “To the North, you said?”

I nodded glumly. I thought of Patrick Colson’s face, of his gentle hands and tormented eyes.

There was rarely a day where I didn’t. I’d taken to drawing his face obsessively, scared I would forget it.

I remembered him slipping those vials into my pocket, kissing my cheek, whispering in my ear that I had a mind of my own.

“Do you think…” I stumbled, my heart pounding. “Is it possible that he started these rumors?”

Aunt Francis had her thumb between her teeth. She chewed on it subconsciously as she stared out at her kitchen, drawn into her own turbulent thoughts.

“This boy,” she said eventually. “What was his name?”

There was something about the way she said it. The forced casualness of it. It made me lock away the name in my middle. “I didn’t know his name.” I was a better actress than Aunt Francis, it seemed. I frowned, modulated my voice.

She looked slightly mollified, as though I’d just taken a task out of her hands. “Well, even if it was this boy, he is just a boy. Rumors pass.”

But these rumors are true , I thought. Doesn’t truth find its foothold eventually?

“As for a union,” Aunt Francis continued. She said the word union as though it were absurd. “No such group unsanctioned by the House of Lords will make much headway. If one exists, I’m sure the culprits will be quickly flushed out.”

I said nothing. Patrick Colson’s face swam around my mind, refusing to fade.