5
I HELD MY HAND BY MY SIDE, FINGERS STRETCHED TOWARD THE Fenian looms clacking and whirring in industrious cacophony as they produced yards of gray wool. I clutched delicate threads of charm magic, spooling them into the fibers on the looms below. Already golden light shimmered in the drab fabric.
“Lady Sophie.” My fingers constricted, nearly cutting off the charm, but I relaxed and kept the bright thread intact.
“Yes?” I smiled politely for Abus Hyrothe, the mill owner, a corpulent Fenian with a nose like a radish. He tolerated my presence here, and that of Sastra-set Alba, with the terse courtesy of a businessman who would have preferred to be left alone. That we were foreigners, and that I was rumored even here to be a witch, didn’t help. Still, throughout the week since we arrived he had been patient with our persistence.
“Have you concluded your observation?” He pursed his lips, gazing out over his small empire of new looms and thinly clad workers. “We’re nearly ready to shut down. This run is complete.”
“Certainly,” I said. I drew the gold threads thinner until they broke and embedded their ends in the weft of the woolen fibers. I had grown so comfortable with the casting that it looked as though I was merely watching the lift and fall of the looms through the thin haze of lint. If, of course, one didn’t pay too much attention to the tension in my right hand.
Abus Hyrothe did not pay attention to much of anything aside from his sparkling new machines and their potential for earning.
“We’ll bundle these up for shipment,” he said. “Same place?”
“The same,” I replied. To the port at Hazelwhite, still held by the tenacious grip of the Reformist army. There it would be cut and sewn into uniforms.
As I left the looms, I passed the stark mill offices. Alba debated the finer points of Fenian currency exchange with the cipher clerk in charge of our account. I had nothing to contribute to that discussion, and so I slipped outside, immediately drawing my pelisse around my shoulders to ward against a damp and determined wind. Galitha stayed warm well into autumn, sometimes slipping back into summer’s cloying heat, and the trees took on a golden cast before losing their leaves. Here, the few trees that clung to life inland were thin and bent, their needles the same dark gray cast as the rocky cliffs. The northern ocean sapped the warmth from the rock, and the wind painted the coast with cold salt spray. Our crossing from Kvyset, in a tenacious ship whose captain pushed her into the waves like a tailor gliding a needle through coarse wool, had taken three miserably cold weeks, pushing all the while against that dogged wind.
“Miss.” The voice, a hushed hiss. “Miss.” I jumped and whirled around.
The mill worker was a short, skinny Fenian, a scab of beard crusting an angular face. “Yes?” I said, stepping toward him, uncertain. It was clear to me that trusting anyone in Fen was a risky endeavor. They all knew I was a charm caster, if they knew who I was at all.
“You are Galitha?”
I almost laughed—in a symbolic way, in this strange little delegation to Fen, I did represent Galitha. But I knew a good-faith attempt at my language when I heard it. “I am Galatine, yes.”
“No. Yes, I mean that, you are the Galatine woman? The Sophie?”
“Yes,” I replied carefully. “I am Sophie Balstrade.”
“Good! Yes. You will—for minute?” He beckoned with his fingers, folding them back over his hand, the terse Fenian motion for come here.
“What is your name?” I asked, out of politeness more than anything, but also ready to file it away in case of trouble later.
“Beryk Olber.” He was nervous, glancing over his shoulder, and he made me nervous, too, even though I stood a head taller than him. “My friends waiting.” My nerves ratcheted up, and then calmed. He wouldn’t announce a mob ready to maul me, would he?
He led me past the benches and through the low doorway that opened into a workers’ cloakroom. Several other mill workers waited, all in nondescript gray wool trousers and jackets. One reached into a pocket, then another, and pulled something out. I backed up, fearful of hidden weapons, but they each drew out something more dangerous than a knife or pistol.
Each had a red cap that he solemnly pulled on over tow-bright queue or shorn dark hair.
“You are Miss Balstrade?” A taller man with cheeks scoured red by the bitter Fenian wind held out an honest hand. “I am Hyrd Golingstrid, and am the leader of our group.”
“Your group?” I asked, keeping my tone as polite as possible as I took his massive calloused hand in greeting.
“We are inspired by revolt in Galitha,” Beryk said. “That a man will stand up to his overlord, there, means we can stand here, too.” He pulled something else from his pocket—a thin, very worn pamphlet, and handed that volatile weapon to me.
It was a new title, one I had not yet seen, but it clearly bore my brother’s name across the bottom in confident, block-printed ink.
“Oh,” I said, very softly. Tenacity and the Breaking of Chains, the title traipsed across the page. I flipped it open, quickly, and read a few lines, falling swiftly into the familiar cadence of my brother’s writing. A date on the inner cover confirmed that it had been printed only shortly before I had left Kvyset for Fen. Kristos was still writing—it was reassuring in its bittersweet familiarity.
Of course, I hadn’t expected his work to reach Fenian factory workers. I forced myself to hand the pamphlet, clearly prized by these men even if few of them could read it, back to Beryk. “I had no idea, that is—I know very little about Fenian politics. I… forgive me, but I thought that your government was elected.”
“Fenian politics, Miss Balstrade, is money.” Hyrd shook his head. “We elect governance, yes, but it is only those willing to—how to say?—to stand on the back of his fellow Fenian who have the money to be elected. And meanwhile, our work is danger, our pay is poor, and our families go hungry when the mills shut down.”
I swallowed, not sure what to say. Our fight in Galitha felt quite different, for a change in governance, for representation. Still, it stemmed from the same place—from a disrespect for the common people.
“We mean not to give alarm,” Beryk continued, misreading my reticence.
“I’m not afraid—certainly not of you,” I said with a reassuring smile. “But I’m not sure I understand—that is, why did you bring me here?”
“We know that our work for your cause is of great import, though it lines the pockets of the rylkfen—that is, the factory and mill owners, there is not a good translation.” Hyrd leaned toward me. “We will finish our assignments to the best of our ability, but do not be surprised to hear of trouble.”
I stepped back, almost involuntarily. “What sort of trouble?”
“The rylkfen care for profit. We will deny them their profit,” Hyrd said. “We know the balance of task and time that produces their gold; we will upset that balance.”
“Couldn’t you simply… quit?” I asked.
“Yes, but then they would replace us. No, we will cut them where they bleed and they will not know—who is the beetle in the salt cod?” I suppressed a laugh at an expression that didn’t work well in Galatine. “They know we are discontent. How discontent, they will learn.”