Nod looked over his shoulder then waved her on. ‘I didn’t see you. Good luck, Tee!’ He patted her on the shoulder.
Tiaan found that rather ominous. He’d not wished her luck before. Shrugging on her overcoat, she went out into the wind. The path down to the mine was slushy, the snow on either side brown with soot from furnaces that burned night and day. At the first bend, just before the forest, she looked back.
The clanker manufactory carved an ugly scar across the hillside. From here it comprised a grimy series of scalloped walls ten spans tall, with slits high up and battlements above them. Guard towers hung over the corners, though they were seldom manned, the manufactory being hundreds of leagues from the enemy lines. From the rear a cluster of chimneys belched smoke of various hues – white, orange and greasy black.
Tiaan did not think of the place as ugly. It was just home, and work, the two concepts like joined twins. It had been home since her mother, the pre-eminent breeder in the breeding factory at Tiksi, had sold Tiaan’s indenture to the manufactory at the age of six. She had been here ever since. She occasionally went to Tiksi, three or four hours’ walk down a steep and stony path, but the rest of the world might not have existed.
There was no time for it. Life was regimented for war and everyone had their place in it. The work was tedious, the hours long, but crime was unheard of. No one was afraid to walk the streets at night.
To her left, another path tracked the snow under the aqueduct, then across the gash of the faultline before winding up the mountain to the tar mine. On rare hot days up there, tar oozed out of the shattered rocks and could be scraped into buckets. Mostly, though, the miners hacked solid tar from the drives or followed erratic seams of brittle pitch though the mountain. It was the worst job in the world, and few survived to old age, but someone had to do it. The furnaces of the manufactory must be fed. Its clankers were vital to the war. And the war was being lost.
Controllers were just as critical. Tiaan could imagine how the soldiers must have felt, attacked by ravening lyrinx and realising they had no protection because their clankers had stalled. She could not bear to think that it might have been her fault.
She hurried along the path to the lower mine, where the hedron crystals were found. It was twenty minutes’ walk down a steep decline and Tiaan had plenty of time to fret, though she was no closer to a solution when she reached the main adit.
‘Mornin’, Tiaan!’ Lex, the day guard, nodded at her from his cavern like a statue in a temple. His ill-fitting false teeth sat on the counter, as usual. Sometimes the miners hid them, sparking a frantic search and emotional outbursts.
‘Morning, Lex. Where’s Joe today, do you know?’
‘Down on fif’ level,’ Lex mumbled. Without his teeth it was hard to make out what he was saying. ‘Take six’ tunnel on right an’ follow to end.’
‘Thanks!’ Selecting a lantern from the shelf, she lit it at Lex’s illegal blaze, a brazier full of fuming pitch shards, and set off. The sides of the tunnel were strewn with broken wheels off ore carts, cracked lifting buckets, tattered strands of rope and all the other equipment that accumulated in a mine as old as this one.
When Tiaan reached the lifting wheel she found it unattended. She rang the bell but it was not answered so she got into a basket, eased off the brake and wound herself down. Level one, level two, level three. The shafts ran deep and dark and old here. It had been a mine for hundreds of years before the value of the crystals was recognised. As she passed the fourth level a blast of air set the basket rocking, almost blowing out her lantern. At least the ventilation system was working. There had been bad air down here the last time she’d come. One of the miners had nearly died.
Cranking herself down to the fifth level, Tiaan stepped into the tunnel and made sure the brake was off, otherwise no one could use the lift and the attendant would have to come down on a rope to free it.
It was pleasantly warm on this level, a nice contrast to outside and to the manufactory