The Black Rose Part 2

"Good night."

An indeterminate amount of time pa.s.sed. Jack rolled over. He could hear Ruth breathing softly in her sleep a few feet away. The single-pane window projected the flickering orange light from the nearest lamppost directly onto his face. He clambered up off the floor and pulled the ragged curtains shut. But it still wasn't dark. Another light shone behind him.

"Inari!" he hissed, spinning around to see the white fox on top of his sheets, twin tails wavering hypnotically on either side of his triangular head. "We can't talk now. Ruth's in here!"

The fox glanced around and caught sight of the figure in the bed. "Oh! So are you two... ?"

"No! Well, maybe... but it's complicated-"

"Ah, 'it's complicated'... the eternal deferral of unrequited love..."

Jack glared at the fox, now settling himself down on the floor. As before, he did not so much hear the fox's voice as sense it reverberating inside his head. "I was wondering when you'd next turn up. Not much has happened since we left Thorin Salr."

"I know. I've been watching you."

"You can watch us?" Jack replied, slightly alarmed. "Where is it you live, exactly?"

"Here and there. My essence is anch.o.r.ed in the Shard, but I can come and go in spirit form pretty much wherever I please."

"Does that mean you can go and check up on Alex?"

The fox shook his head. "Alex is, I a.s.sume, in Nexus. I would rather not go there. There's a powerful consciousness in that world from which I would do well to conceal my presence."

"What, the Emperor? Icarus?"

"No. It's the-" But the fox's voice caught in his throat, making him gag. This had happened before when Inari had tried to tell Jack a little too much about his predicament. "Something else," the fox finally managed, giving up.

Jack sighed and sagged back a bit in his seated position. "Great. Just when I think I've got a grip on what's going on, it all changes again." He paused. "In that case, could you possibly go and keep an eye on Lucy?"

The fox nodded. "In the Sveta Mountains? That shouldn't be too much trouble."

Jack considered the fox for a moment. "Inari... the letter from Isaac which Sardar read us... it said that you weren't who you say you are..."

The fox raised his head slightly, looking at him intently. "Did it, now? Yes, I met Isaac. The brother of Ruth's adoptive father, wasn't he?"

"You don't know what happened to him, then? Isaac, I mean."

"I'm afraid I do ... but that would really be giving the game away..."

Jack blinked, and the room was dark, devoid of the shimmering white light that seemed to accompany Inari whenever he appeared. The fox was gone.

Chapter V.

the daily grind Dawn brought a weak light upon Albion. From the upstairs window, Jack could see that the city was feeling the labor pains of a new era. The spires of churches and cathedrals jostled with smog-belching funnels and rattling cranes. Fragile cobbled streets lined with gabled houses were now intersected by wide, mud-swept roads that acted like arteries for carriages and carts. In contrast to the old sculpted wood and stone, factories sat like blackened brick behemoths, engorging workers and spewing out mechanically produced goods. Yet beyond the haze encircling the buildings, Jack could just about make out pale green hills on the horizon.

It didn't take long for Jack and Bal, having raided the storerooms of the inn for appropriate clothing, to find work. They walked a couple of streets up from The Kestrel's Quill to discover a foreman's a.s.sistant, who had set up a makeshift desk on the side of the road and was signing men up for factory work.

Jack was unsurprised to see Bal unsure on his feet, having grown to human height overnight; his clumsiness drew a few odd looks from fellow applicants and a snide remark from the foreman's a.s.sistant. Having had their names taken down-a necessity, it seemed, because many of the fellow men were illiterate-the two of them joined the lumbering march across the town to the factory building.

Ruth, meanwhile, had found a job through the landlady, whose niece worked as a maid in an aristocrat's city household only a few hundred feet from the inn. Apparently consulting a mental address book, the landlady had pointed Ruth in the direction of a woman she knew would hire "coloreds."

Upon her meek arrival at the servants' entrance, Ruth discovered the lady of the house's ward was herself not white. The so-called house was more of a manor: an impressive whitish-grey building with wide columns not unlike a temple's. It clearly belonged to a wealthy district entirely apart from The Kestrel's Quill quarter and the rest of the city.

Sardar had left before the others had awoken, leaving only a note in the most ambiguous terms explaining that he was going on a fact-finding mission and would see them that evening. Jack suspected he didn't want the landlady, with her clientele apparently fervently committed to bigotry, to have too much of an idea what he was up to.

At school, Jack had enjoyed learning about the industrial revolution, but nothing could have prepared him for this factory. The dark-bricked cuboid squatted by the riverside, encircled by a rusting cast-iron fence and a collection of ramshackle outhouses. Chimneys rose from its apex like dark spires, belching smoke into the air to be sifted over the rooftops by the wind. A thick crowd of men poured over the cobbles into the forecourt, foremen a.s.signing them through various stable-like doors. Jack and Bal joined the mob, trying not to trip and be engulfed by the many boots marching relentlessly onwards as if belonging to some kind of gigantic millipede. They were swept beneath the sign on the gate-Goodwin Construction Ltd.-and, directed by a man on a soapbox, dragged off in a slipstream through one of the dim entrances.

The first thing that hit them was the noise: the clanging and grinding of machinery refracting off the walls and floor. The room was cavernous, the upper half a matrix of leather pulleys and metal piping. Two of the chimneys extended through the chamber like trunks, their bases, if not the heat emanating from them, obscured by the aisles of interconnected devices. Jack breathed in and spluttered-the air was pummelled with gases and particles thicker than oxygen.

He glanced at Bal. The dwarf's eyes were wide in shock and possibly terror, much more so than they had been in the midst of battle. Jack had to remind himself that the dwarf could never have conceived anything like this, his own kingdom being almost a millennium away from this kind of economic progress.

Though the crowd had slimmed, they were still carried with considerable force past the aisles. Perhaps hundreds of men were already here, operating the machinery, stoking the chimneys, and shifting a plethora of metal components about. They all, without exception, looked exhausted and ill. Their backs were hunched with strain, and grease and dirt matted their clothes, hair, and skin. Jack noticed many with missing limbs and some with open wounds that still seemed to be bleeding. Something knocked into his thigh, and he looked down to see a child, no older than seven or eight, bow his head in apology and scuttle away, hugging a hefty iron disc to his chest.

Somehow, Jack and Bal found themselves in front of a line of consoles with a group of other men. Apparently aware of the next step, the others stepped up and began busying themselves with the operation. Jack and Bal hung back.

"What do we do?" the dwarf roared at him over the din.

"I don't know," Jack shouted back, shrugging. The contraption before them looked ancient and seeped oil.

He watched the man next to him take a metal rod the length of a cricket bat from a bundle on the left and clamp it in place. With a switch, the man turned on a spinning blade, which made contact with the rod with a grinding shriek. Hot ribbons of metal and sparks cascaded off. After a couple of minutes, the blade was released and stopped spinning. The man dropped the rod, now thinner along one-third of its length, into a tin barrel to the right and took up the next one.

Jack stepped up to his machine and, showing Bal how to do it, completed his first rod. It wasn't particularly even, and he had to apply quite a lot of force to keep the blade in place for two minutes.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he dropped the rod into the barrel and turned to the man he'd watched. "What are we making?"

The man looked up with red-rimmed eyes, shrugged, and returned to his task.

The working day was much longer than either of them had thought possible. Once light began to fade from the ma.s.sive grime-encrusted window above them, gas lamps were lit at every few workstations. The labor quickly became mind-numbingly dull and then actively painful. The workers could not sit down and so had to hunch over the consoles, shifting their weight to keep both feet working. The factory floor was stiflingly hot, and Jack suffered several coughing fits when the smoke-heavy air became too much. Oil quickly ingrained their clothes and arms, and their muscles ached from applying pressure to the spinning blade.

Foremen prowled between the aisles all day, batons in hand, clearly searching for anyone who appeared to be slacking. Just as at school, Jack could sense the others around him working particularly efficiently whenever they were being watched. But, at school, relaxing too long hadn't earned anyone a beating. He witnessed an elderly man in the next aisle being dragged out under the arms, a bruise blossoming on his temple.

Jack could feel Bal shifting next to him, instinctively reaching for the axe that was usually by his side. Jack placed a warning hand on the dwarf's arm. He was as disgusted as Bal, but they were under strict instructions from Sardar not to draw attention to themselves. He had to resist the urge to exact quick and undetectable alchemical revenge on the guilty foreman.

Finally, once all sense of time had been drained from the two of them, Jack became aware that the mechanical noises were quieting. The men finished their tasks and stepped away from the machines, easing their muscles. Jack and Bal did the same and joined the slow trail of dirty bodies trudging out of the factory. Small pouches of coins, incredibly light, were handed to each upon their exit from the building.

"Not great pay, is it?" a boy next to Jack commented, rattling the bag.

"Nope," Jack croaked, his voice hoa.r.s.e from thirst.

"Oh, well. I guess it'll buy dinner."

Jack couldn't even muster the energy to agree as the boy turned left out of the forecourt and disappeared into the crowd.

Lucy could see them at least half an hour before they reached the camp: three insubstantial mounds, almost like dark igloos. She had first thought they had been small tents, until they drew close enough for her to make out the shuffling movements and the glint of reptilian eyes reflecting the snow.

Their journey across the plain was arduous, and it took much longer than they'd expected. The snow was piled thicker on the flatlands, and in places they found themselves trudging through freezing powder. The wind cut harder the farther they ventured into the open, sheets of daggers sliding into any exposed flesh and pounding it deep crimson. Lucy's gut, already uncomfortable, was wrenched with hunger when they halted, shivering, several feet before the goblin trio.

"Welcome," the central goblin called in a Slavic-like accent, her hoa.r.s.e voice barely audible over the wind. "We do not receive many visitors here." She was immensely old, her greyish-green scaly skin cracked into wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. What Lucy had taken to be obesity at a distance was actually a coc.o.o.n of matted furs and hides wrapped around her so as to only leave her face and gloved hands visible. The two either side, both male, were taller but more lightly wrapped, and both carried spears from which shreds of cloth fluttered.

"We mean you no harm." Hakim laid down his staff. "We have come in search of an alchemical artifact and to deliver a message to you. Perhaps there is somewhere we can talk?"

The goblin matriarch nodded and turned, shuffling through the snow into the midst of the campsite. Lucy, Vince, Ada, and Hakim followed, the two goblin guards closing ranks behind them.

The campsite seemed to have been constructed to provide maximum wind resistance for those moving about within: tents a.s.sembled in concentric circles with minimal gaps between them. As they pa.s.sed through the aisle between two banks of canvases, the resident goblins clambered out onto thresholds to watch them intently.

Lucy felt slightly uneasy. The goblins she had met before had been quite happy to mix with elves. They had even recognized her and Jack as humans through their alchemical disguises, but to expect the same of these would be like a.s.suming there were no racist humans. If this community was as segregated from the outer world as it seemed, they might not react well to alien visitors.

At the center of the campsite stood the tallest tent, a domed structure decorated with tribal patterns and weighted with snow. The goblin matriarch disappeared beneath the awning, and the travelers followed her.

The interior was significantly warmer. It was lit by a circle of candles set in the center of the floor, a few flickering out from their movement as they stooped to maneuver into seated positions. Some sort of stylized map was cut into the material of the floor between the candles, depicting mountains, rivers, and several other locales. What appeared to be the matriarch's living s.p.a.ce was on the opposite side of the entrance: a nest of furs, thick hides, and rugs, into which she now settled herself.

The candlelight did little to penetrate the darkness encircling the group of travelers. The matriarch retrieved a slender wooden stick and proceeded to relight some of the candles. The only other illumination was the humming glow of four language rings as the goblin began to speak.

"I believe I already know what you seek. The Fifth Shard of the Risa Star, long since entrusted to my tribe to protect. It is our most holy relic. We will not yield it lightly." She completed the circle and, raising the wand to her lips, blew out the flame.

"We do not seek it lightly," Hakim responded. "We are Apollonians: we represent an organization which aims to reunite the Risa Star to defend our worlds against the Darkness."

The matriarch fixed him with her gaze, piercing despite her age. "You are either familiar with our legends or have similar ones of your own. We have guarded the Shard against the Darkness far longer than your organization has sought it. Even if it is to be used for good, why should we give it up to you?"

"That's the message we've come to deliver," Vince cut in. "There's another organization, the Cult of Dionysus-our mirror image, if you like-that wants to obtain the Shards to create a superweapon. If they succeed, Darkness will pour into our universe like never before."

"And you believe this Cult is here, in the Sveta Mountains?"

"We know it. Or they're at least on their way. We mean no disrespect"-he eyed the guards, who had followed them inside with their spears-"but you've never faced anything like them before. Particularly not the two archbishops who've specifically been dispatched to extract the Shard from you."

The matriarch regarded him imperiously. "We are not savages, human. We know how to defend ourselves and that which we love."

"Of course, we know," Ada replied, bowing her head slightly, "but we still think our expertise would not go amiss. How might we convince you of our need to take the Shard?"

"The high priest is currently praying at the Shard's resting place at the Cave of Lights. You may converse with him on such matters when he returns. Until then"-the matriarch stood-"we will provide for you."

The guests got to their feet and bowed their heads, understanding themselves to be dismissed.

The guards led them out of the tent and into the biting gale. A small crowd had acc.u.mulated outside the matriarch's quarters, evidently curious about the visitors.

One of the guards raised his spear and called over the wind, "These travelers are our guests until the high priest returns from prayer. Who amongst you will share your home to give them keep?"

The response wasn't exactly stirring. There were mutterings, and those in the front shrunk backwards as if they would be picked on just for being most visible. The guards scanned the group for a few moments. Then, finally, a solitary, thickly wrapped hand rose.

"Many thanks, Maht. The matriarch will consider you kindly."

The crowd dispersed. The goblin who had volunteered was left looking slightly forlorn and more than a little intimidated, and the four tall strangers approached her. She was slight, even though enshrined in layers of clothing, with wispy dark hair that was partially beaded. She coughed a little whilst beckoning them to follow her.

Maht led the four into one of the alleyways, moving round the circle of tents until they had lost sight of the entrance. She halted outside one of the smaller tents and hoisted the flap, ushered them inside, and folded it shut behind them.

Maht's dwelling was far less grand than the matriarch's. It seemed to be a general practice that tents were lit by a circle of candles in the center of the floor, though this one was significantly smaller. Furs were piled to the left of the entrance, where a small goblin girl was curled up asleep. The goblin's few possessions-a collection of pots, bundles of long candles, and sealed jars that seemed to make up some kind of larder-were stacked around the rest of the room.

Maht busied herself rearranging the furs to create as much additional sleeping s.p.a.ce as possible. "Please, make yourselves comfortable. Would you like a drink? Or something to eat?"

Lucy nodded vigorously, and the other three seconded, though rather more politely.

As they settled themselves upon the furs and peeled off layers of soaked clothing, the goblin scooped some snow in a tin and began to warm it over the candles. She rummaged through a few pots and handed them each a sphere the size of a baseball.

Lucy sniffed it and bit into it hesitantly. It tasted a little like Christmas stuffing but with stronger spices. "What is this?"

Maht looked around, surprised and slightly wary. "It's herb bread, mixed with salted meat. We make it in the summer months and store it for the winter."

"It's good," Lucy replied, keen to make her last question seem less indignant. And it was good and surprisingly filling. She could feel the tension in her stomach easing with every mouthful.

The others were finishing theirs with relish. Maht decanted the hot water into four metal cups and pa.s.sed one to each of them. Lucy tasted it; it seemed to be some kind of thick broth.

Vince, Ada, and Hakim had piled their wet clothes next to the circle of candles. Lucy did the same and tried to find a comfortable position on the furs. Considering they were only inches from snow, it was considerably warm in here. She had been camping as a child, and this wasn't so different at all.

"Thanks for letting us stay," Vince said as the goblin woman settled herself next to her child.

Maht smiled slightly, before closing her eyes and pulling her daughter a little closer.

Chapter VI.

a day off That week was probably the longest in Jack's life. It didn't take him long to decide there were places he'd much rather be than Albion. He and Lucy hadn't been particularly impressed at being catapulted from Earth into a war zone, but at least in Thorin Salr there had been a clear plan and sense of progress: rescue Sardar; be trained in combat and alchemy; fend off a Cult insurgency; forge a peace deal with the goblins. In Albion, they seemed to be accomplishing nothing, and there was no end in sight.

The workweek was six days long, and it seemed only the last vestiges of preindustrial tradition kept the factory owners from illegalizing weekends. Factory days were even longer than Jack and Bal's first had been. Having to rise before dawn, and without a chance for lunch, they were barely able to stand by the time the bell tolled for them to finish. The few hours of sleep they sc.r.a.ped at night were hardly sufficient to keep them awake and alert throughout the following day.

In his time at the factory, Jack witnessed the brutality he had read about in school. There were four incidences of major accidents on the floor, in which limbs were mangled or sheared off by machinery. He tried not to look when the injured men were escorted out, leaving a thin trail of blood along their exit route, but in some cases he could not help himself. One of these was so grotesque that he had to stop working in order to bend over and retch. The threat of a nearby foreman's baton, however, returned him to his task.

Once, towards the end of the week, a miniature strike was started: a group of men in the next aisle put down their tools and linked arms, claiming they would not work any longer until they were paid enough to feed their families. One began pa.s.sing round pamphlets, auth.o.r.ed by an apparently notorious political figure, ent.i.tled "The Brutal Power of Capital and How We Can Break It." The culprits were swiftly dealt with. The strikers were beaten and told that they would be paid nothing if they did not work, and the foreman began randomly searching workers for the treasonous pamphlet. More than one was clubbed until his skull bled and he had to be dragged outside.

Ruth's work, whilst less harrowing, was barely less arduous. She had arrived on her first day and been immediately co-opted into the scrubbing of the kitchen floor. The woman in charge of the domestic duties, Matron Flint, ran the household with military precision and efficiency. Tasks were allocated in rotation, for which a comprehensive credit system had been devised. Those women and girls who did not fulfill their daily credit quota, whether because of fatigue or laziness, did not have to wait long to feel the back of Matron Flint's hand.

On her first day, Ruth had found herself, amongst other duties, washing laundry, brushing the stairs, laying the table for supper, shining the silverware, and dusting the banisters. Though she glimpsed a few visitors to the house, at no point did she see its mistress, her employer.

With the joint earnings of the three of them and shared rooms, they just managed to afford their accommodation cost and two meals a day, with a little left over. The Kestrel's Quill was gratifyingly cheap, though hardly a monument to culinary achievement. Jack, seeing someone else order a meat dish, settled on a broth which, while watery and insubstantial, was at least hot. Bal seemed rather offended by the lack of roasted hog or whatever he had come to expect back in the halls of his homeland. Ruth, as a vegetarian, had to be contented with a plate of soggy potatoes, carrots, and greens.