Red Wishes Black Ink

Unknown, Spy of the 10th Renown, Penchenne, at the end of a long engagement

Cortland Finiron, Hammer Master of the 12th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, earth mover

Watts Stonework, Survivor of the 1st Renown, Soldier's Rest, in charge of a new project

8 Blossum, 61 AW

The Tomb, a tavern in the Soldier's Rest district of Infinzel, North Continent

52 days until the next Granting

It had to be their idea.

A year of tedious planning and paperwork, of securing the equipment, and then carefully scouting out the right location. Then, weeks of subtle interviews and background investigations, all to choose the correct associates, ones who she could keep in line, ones who could handle the work and not ask questions. After that, month after month of monotonous digging.

So much digging, though the spy rarely picked up a shovel herself.

She had used one last month, actually, when she needed to kill one of her men. He slipped on a ladder, broke his leg, and wouldn't stop screaming when the infection set in. The spy had more subtle means of killing available to her, but she'd chosen the shovel so as not to tip her hand to the rest of the men. A quick blow to the base of the skull. The injured man's hysterics had been bad for morale, so the murder came as a relief. An increased share for the remaining men raised spirits further.

All of that, finally, thankfully, behind her. The spy had at last reached the last step of her assignment. Although she felt confident in her preparations, there was no denying that she would not have perfect control over this finishing nudge. An uncomfortable notion for the spy.

It had to be their decision.

The spy had chosen a tavern in the district known as Soldier's Rest, which the gods apparently made bigger every day based on how many broken wall tattoos the spy observed in the streets. The place was called The Tomb on account of how it served masons from the mineral garden, primarily those tasked with the low work of feeding dead things into the bubbling alchemy, and because the first owner had accidentally blown himself up when trying to rig up a still. The place was a shithole even by outer district standards, a narrow box of timber and cracked brick. It stank of oil fumes and sweat.

There were two regulars of The Tomb that interested the spy. Frederick and Platt. Both of them were Twicestone, unrelated, despite what their stupid Infinzel names might suggest, the sons of masons who became masons themselves, and miserable ones at that. Frederick had been kicked out of the pyramidal city years ago for unpaid dues and had been given the broken wall when the gods split the inside from the out. The people of Soldier's Rest didn't like Frederick any more than the people inside the pyramid had. Frederick was a mugger, a goon, and a swindler. Hidden in the shadows one night, the spy had even watched as Frederick emptied Platt's pockets, his only friend as good a target as any.

Of course, Platt had been too drunk to remember. Platt still lived within Infinzel and wore the pyramid dispassionately. He clung to an apartment, his dues supplemented by the guilty father who had forever refused to meet Platt face-to-face. The man who had raised Platt, the mason, was a known cuckold, though Platt had somehow inherited his obliviousness. For a mason, the spy had to admit, Platt was reasonably handsome. He had Salvado blood. Not from the king himself, but from some useless grandchild, good only for making promises to Platt's mother that would never be kept. The spy had heard Platt brag about his royal lineage, though most didn't believe him, or took it only as proof of his mother's whoredom. He was ten years Frederick's junior and admired the brute for reasons that the spy would never be bored enough to extrapolate.

Frederick and Platt were in The Tomb the night that the spy made herself known. She had been there before, but never let them notice her.

The spy wore ragged clothes speckled with clay, a cap pulled low, and work-boots. She made herself look small, like a boy barely out of his teens, the kind who bigger men would send wiggling into tunnels to ferret out precious stones. The spy gave herself a black eye and chapped lips and under this illusion she hid the bracelet that connected her to her mistress back in Penchenne.

In this form, the spy approached the bartender, a red-faced lout who watered down drinks when he thought he could get away with it.

"I need to hire some diggers," the spy said.

"I look like a fucking job board?" the bartender replied.

The spy flashed the man an angle, bumbled it on purpose, and leaned over the bar to snag it. As she did this, she let the handkerchief covering her nervously bobbing bump droop low, revealing the scales of Penchenne for the bartender to see.

"I can pay," she said.

"I bet you can," the bartender replied. "What you need dug?"

The spy peeked around as if to make sure no one was listening. Behind her, Frederick and Platt pretended to be very absorbed in their drinks.

"That king of yours, he don't got things as sewn up as he thinks," the spy said. "I found a stone growth in a warehouse when I was making a delivery. Jewels in it, I'm sure. I just need some muscle."

"You in here trying to sell me paste? That how this hustle ends?"

"I'm trying to get paid," the spy whined. "I thought this was where the stone bloods came to drink. You don't want a finder's fee, I can go ask somewhere else."

"Relax," the bartender said with a laugh. "Come back tomorrow night. I'll have someone for you. Thirty angles, now, for my trouble and the going rate for night-work is—"

"Thirty angles up front?" the spy exclaimed. "Piss on that. I'll cut you in on the backend. Five percent. Ten if you can set me up with a fence."

"Go back to Penchenne and find a fence, you idiot kid, you don't…" The bartender trailed off, realizing that he had been imparting actually useful advice for free. "You got the thirty angles or not?"

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"I'm… I'm gonna shop around," the spy muttered.

The spy pulled her cap low and slunk out the door. She heard Frederick's chair scrape the floor as he stood up to follow her.

She made three more stops at three other taverns, making the same awkward pitch to increasingly skeptical bartenders, always haggling, never divulging too many details. Frederick and Platt tailed her everywhere.

Finally, with the slumped shoulders of a hapless small-timer, the spy led the two men back to her warehouse. The building stood in a row of similar nondescript structures, all meant for storage as commerce passed through Infinzel. The street was deserted this late, especially since the fires that burnt through the district, the rebuild coming along slowly with the city so divided.

Frederick and Platt stopped to share a smokeroll across the thoroughfare, believing that they were being subtle. The spy rolled her eyes. She made a show of jangling her keys as she opened the padlock and unhooked the chain barring the entry.

The spy's [Alert] sounded in her ears when the two men rushed her. She ignored it and wouldn't have needed the ability anyway—their scuffing footsteps were so loud as they raced across the road that they may as well have been a pack of dogs. Still, she pretended that she didn't notice, relying on the protection of the gods.

Frederick clapped her across the back of the head with a sap. The spy cried out, seeing spots, as he shoved her the rest of the way through the door and pinned her to the ground. Platt followed, closing and bolting the warehouse door.

"What've you got, pig boy?" Frederick snarled. "Oink oink."

Penchenne. Pigpens. Pigpennies. Pigs. It had been many years since someone had used one of those terms on the spy.

She sobbed. "Nothing! I got no—"

Frederick punched her in the face. "Gods protect you, filthy fucking pig," he said. "But I can make you wish they didn't."

"It smells in here, doesn't it?" Platt said. "Stinks."

"Like a pig," Frederick said.

"No, no. Worse than that."

While Frederick held the spy by the throat, Platt made his way over to where she had left the bodies of her former associates piled sloppily under a blanket. They had seen it coming, in the end, but couldn't do anything to stop her.

Platt recoiled from the stabbed and bludgeoned mess of Penchennese workmen. "Careful, Fred! That kid's some kind of murderer!"

"This little shit?" Frederick ground his knee into the spy's stomach. "Doubt it."

"They—they killed each other, all of 'em," the spy stammered. "I was the only one left and—and—and—"

Frederick slapped her this time. "What'd you find, boy?"

"I can cut you in, both of you," the spy said. "I'm not strong enough to work the machines."

Frederick laughed. "Cut us in? Fucking Penchenne, stealing right from under our noses, and you're thinking you can haggle?"

Platt had drifted further into the warehouse, snooping beyond the carefully arranged semi-circle of wagons that the spy had used to block the pit from view. He whistled.

"Fred, they got a whole quarry dug back here," he said. "And look at this!"

He held up a diamond the size of a walnut, the jewel angular and rough, wild—not like the smooth stones grown in Infinzel's mineral gardens, but like the ones chiseled from the cliffs outside Penchenne. Properly refined and fenced, the diamond would be enough to pay Platt's dues for years, and keep Frederick from needing to rob except as sport. The spy knew, however, that such a windfall would not be enough for either man. She counted on that.

"Show me," Frederick said. He dragged the spy to her feet and shoved her deeper into the warehouse. "Show me where to dig."

9 Blossum, 61 AW

Outside the walls of Infinzel, North Continent

51 days until the next Granting

Cortland stood in the northern fields outside the walls of Infinzel and watched as the arrangement between two quills took shape.

A square of a thousand paces on each side had been dug out to a depth of six feet. As Cortland walked around the edge, head already sweating from the morning sun, men and women of Soldier's Rest worked on rigging up a pulley system. Wagons carrying chunks of marble bumped carefully up the road, lining up near the dig, all of this under the supervision of Rivian Stonespirit. The champion rode her warhorse—a frothing, white-maned palomino born of her new Ink—through all the activity.

This site was to be the mineral garden of Soldier's Rest.

"Still can't believe he agreed to this," Cortland said.

Walking beside him, Watts Stonework shrugged. He pulled his monocle away from his scarred eye, thumbing free some grit. The champion had been down in the hole, flattening the earth, until Cortland arrived.

"More conditions than Bel wanted," Watts said. "Marble and steel only, and none of it to be exported outside Infinzel without clearance from some panel of Twicegolds. Still. A happy arrangement for all."

Cortland nodded. He couldn't help but think of the Penchennese champion who Ben Tuarez had killed, the one whose embittered lover had then written Ben's name on a coin. The start of so much trouble. That was the year when Penchenne wished for a mineral garden of their own. That attempt had been met with brutality but now, with this Soldier's Rest faction split off from his own people, King Cizco chose to negotiate.

"Cizco told you how to do all this? He gave you the…" Cortland squinted, searching for the word. "Specifications?"

"No," Watts said. "We already had those. Although, according to my wife, when Bel showed him the plans, King Cizco graciously verified them."

"You had them?" Cortland snorted. He hardly had to ask. "Carina had time to write that down before she took off south?"

Watts chuckled. "She wrote them down when she was sixteen, Cortland. Bel has had them for years." They stepped around a towering pile of dirt. "Dig a hole, dump in some stones, fill it with a slurry. Doesn't take a genius."

Cortland gave him a look.

"Well, it's not the hard part, anyway," Watts said. "The rune-work is what's stopped us all these years. Even when Carina cracked the symbols, she never figured how to keep it powered."

"Huh," said Cortland. He suspected that Carina now understood that part of the equation, too, though she hadn't been able to share it with Bel Guydemion.

"So, once we have it all put together, the king will cast his wish to give it life."

Cortland shook his head. According to terms reached while the champions were on Nortmost, King Cizco would use Infinzel's wish to power the mineral garden of Soldier's Rest. Meanwhile, Bel Guydemion would use the wish of Soldier's Rest to ask for another year of undiminished life for King Cizco. Thus, the eight champions would have every reason to work together and ensure each other's survival.

An unprecedented arrangement for unprecedented times.

The Garrison uniform that Cortland wore felt itchy and tight in the shoulders. He stopped to loosen the collar, looking around again at the construction. Rivian on her horse in her old-fashioned cavalry dress, the workers, the plans, the chunks of marble—so much to bring together in such a short time.

"Where did Guydemion get all this?" Cortland asked. "Like it appeared overnight."

"The Orvesians chased the old man's army across the continent for years," Watts replied. "He traveled light, kept caches hidden across the land, supplies and weapons paid for with his family's noble fortune. War ended for Bel, but I don't think he ever got out of the habit of stashing things away."

Across the pit, Rivian gracefully leapt from the back of her horse, grabbing one end of a rope and helping to secure it around a slab of marble. Cortland considered asking Watts where—and why—Bel had been hiding that woman, but decided he didn't want to make his friend an informer.

"What do you need from me?" Cortland asked. "I could've broken the earth for you, but you did well enough on your own."

"We've had some vandals," Watts said. "Sloppy damage. Probably the work of drunks. Nothing that set us back much. Still, it's a nuisance, and it's coming from inside."

"I'll assign a patrol," Cortland said. Watts raised an eyebrow. "Men I trust."

"Appreciated." Watts brushed his hands together. "Now, how would you feel about shoving around some big fucking rocks?"

Cortland cracked his knuckles and started to respond, but noticed a familiar shape cutting a path toward him from the direction of Infinzel. It took him a moment to place the young man—short brown hair, stature that rivaled some of the stone blocks, but with the soft eyes of a calf. His determined strides carried him to Cortland and Watts, and at last it clicked into place. The last time Cortland had seen the kid, his face had been half-burned off.

"Walton Tendersword," Cortland said.

Dressed in civilian clothes, no longer a soldier of the Garrison, Walton nonetheless snapped off a formal bow.

"Master Finiron, I'd heard you were back," Walton said, his voice an octave too timid for a man his size. "I'd filed requests for a meeting through my supervisor in the quartermaster's office but… ah… I don't think they're sending them on."

Cortland squeezed Walton's heavy bicep, trying to ease his nerves. "You don't need an appointment with me, lad, not after we fought side-by-side. What is it?"

"There's an issue, sir," Walton said. "A problem in the Underneath that no one wants fixed."