Chương 70: Chapter 71: Singing in the Wind

The Copper-Bound Mining Pick rode against my shoulder in its green peace-bind, wrapped and harmless to anyone except the part of me that remembered how its grip felt in my hand. Its strength had faded outside the supplier's hall, but every exposed cutting, pale quarry shelf and dark line beneath roadside moss drew my attention. Talia had called Halden's investment a noose. He had tied nothing around my neck.

He had put a tool in my hands, named work only I might reach, and left my own need to tighten the arrangement. The northern road had been cut, widened, braced, abandoned, repaired and cut again. Stone shoulders rose on either side in places, marked by drill scars and rusted peg holes where quarry rails had once bitten into the slope. Slag-dark gravel collected in the ditches, and red dust stained our boots.

Beyond the low ridges, a dull orange appeared under the cloud whenever the day dimmed: the steady furnace glow of Eisenfeld, too far away to warm us and too constant to be weather. We made camp where an old quarry road met the main track and ended against a cliff face. A ring of blackened stones sat beside a slanted shelter built from warped boards and roof tile. A cold stream ran through a cut below the road.

The quarry wall carried old strikes, unfinished cuts and one collapsed section where somebody had moved more stone than intended. A thin whistle travelled from the west as the evening cooled. It rose, narrowed and faded along the cliff face, then returned from farther up the ridge. Talia stopped with her bow half lifted from her shoulder.

"What is that?" Halden listened before answering.

"The Singing Cairns. That is the name people use when geology is insufficiently dramatic."

"That was not an answer." He nodded west, where the ridges folded into pine and shadow.

"There are old stone heaps in the high country. Some formed naturally. Others were built as markers, graves or boundary works. Wind moves through chambers and narrow gaps between the stones. People hear ancestors, warnings, buried cities or gods with damaged lungs." Talia watched the ridge. Her uncertainty remained visible for a moment before she folded it away.

"I have not travelled this far north-west."

"Araluen teaches people to fear the Derwold," Halden said.

"Eisenfeld teaches them to fear what stone keeps after men leave." The whistle moved through the dusk again. The Heartwood Bird warmed beneath my shirt, faintly enough that I might have blamed the walk if the heat had not gathered around the same point each time. I adjusted my coat and found Talia watching my hand. Her attention moved from my chest to the empty snares beside the shelter.

"I am going to keep supper from becoming another discussion about stone. If either of you begins courting the cliff, I will not explain the relationship to Lysa." She disappeared down the slope with her bow, taking the last easy noise in the camp with her. Halden watched me look towards the wrapped pickaxe.

"If you intend to stare at it until dark," he said, "you may as well learn why expensive tools produce expensive injuries." The burn along my side still pulled when I breathed deeply. My wrists remained stiff from the pressure stone, and carrying the pick all afternoon had left a hard ache across my shoulders. Those complaints mattered less than the desire to grip it again. My Will had always been low.

The Heartwood Bird had made the weakness worse, and desire now arrived with enough clear reasons to resemble judgement. Halden led me to the quarry face and set a lantern on a squared block. Before he touched the green cord, he pointed at the wrapped head.

"What did Deane tell you to inspect?"

"The lower band, shoulder grain, head alignment and wedge lift. Bright metal where the head has moved against the socket." This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"When?"

"Before use, after sustained work and again after the haft cools."

"Ability use?"

"No Ember Blade. No Ironwood Strike until someone tests what they do to Copper mining gear."

"Good. Inspect it." I untied the canvas while Halden broke the green peace-bind and kept the severed cord for the receipt. The pick head was darkened Copper with a narrow grey edge. I checked beneath the lower band, ran my thumb along the shoulder grain and looked for movement around the wedge. There was no bright line at the socket and no twist through the haft. Halden made me turn it over and check again from the other side.

"Most damage becomes obvious shortly after the point where an impatient man decides the first inspection was enough." He handed me the tool. The strength entered through my palms and settled into my forearms, hips and stance. The pick became easier to hold than its weight should have allowed. Its effect belonged to stone work, giving my body force shaped for a descending strike rather than the broad violence of a fight.

"Tell me where you would begin," Halden said. I pointed to a pale ridge protruding from the wall.

"There."

"Why?"

"It stands clear of the face."

"It also has a fracture behind it and enough weight above to break your foot when it drops." I lowered the pick. Halden pressed one hand against the stone, then struck three points with a short iron rod from his belt. The first gave a dull reply. The second rang. The third swallowed the sound.

"Listen again." He repeated the taps until the differences became distinct. One section carried the vibration sideways. Another sent it deeper. The dead patch held the sound close, suggesting a gap or broken material behind it.

"Mining requires the face, grain, water, pressure and weight above the strike," Halden said.

"Veinfinder shows strain. Ore Processing separates what comes out. The pick gives force. Mining decides where that force may enter without bringing the roof with it." He marked a low shoulder with chalk.

"Strike there. Shallow angle. Let the head bite before you try to move material." My first blow landed hard and wrong. The shock passed through the haft, wrists and elbows until my teeth met. Chips flew across the lantern light. The cliff lost almost nothing. Halden moved my rear foot, lowered my hands and turned my hips.

"You are swinging an axe at stone. The stone is not impressed by your history." The second strike hurt less. It took a thin chip from the surface and left the deeper face unchanged. The next hour became a collection of corrections. I struck high because the tool made height feel safe. I struck hard because Halden's ten copper sat behind every blow. I chased a dark stain until he scraped it with a knife and showed me damp grit.

A red line drew my eye across the face, but when he crushed the material between two stones it became ordinary dirt stained by water.

"You found colour," he said.

"Beginners often mistake that for finding ore." I changed angle, tightened my grip and tried again. The pick made each mistake feel recoverable with one more strike. That thought returned whenever Halden told me to pause. One more blow could prove I had understood. One more could show the purchase had not been wasted. One more could turn the next correction into progress before he had time to doubt me. Halden caught the haft before I swung again.

"Stop."

"The line is beginning to move."

"The slab above your shoulder is beginning to move." I followed his finger and saw only grey stone. He took the lantern and held it low against the wall. A hairline crack appeared beneath an old quarry scar, narrow enough to disappear whenever the light shifted. My next strike would have landed below it.

"If that breaks," Halden said, "the face comes down through your left arm before the pick returns to guard. Copper strength will help you pull more stone onto yourself." I lowered the tool fully. The borrowed strength still pressed through my hands, making stillness feel like wasted capacity.

"I am trying," I said.

"You are trying to prove that you can mine. The stone only cares whether the strike is correct." He leaned on the iron rod and looked at the quarry face rather than at me.

"My first culvert failed during a spring surge. I designed the channel, calculated the fall and told the water where it ought to travel. The entire structure moved thirty feet downstream. Material answers force according to its own condition. Mining punishes anyone who confuses intention with control."

"You said you can mine Iron stone."

"With suitable tools and enough patience. I read pressure better than many miners because pressure behaves similarly in walls, channels and roofs. Copper-hard faces still require force I cannot sustain, and deeper ore does not loosen because a Floodwright has produced a persuasive drawing."

"That is why you bought the pick."

"That is why I put part of its cost into your hands. You can strike harder than I can. The useful question is whether you can learn where harder belongs." Halden shifted the lantern until its light skimmed across the cliff. The flat grey surface divided into shallow planes, seams, water tracks, mineral specks and old test cuts. The Singing Cairns sounded beyond the ridge, and a faint vibration moved through the stone beneath my palm.

"Put the pick down," Halden said.