The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 37: Volume 2: Chapter 35 — The Quarry Negotiations

Read chapter 37 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Volume 2: Chapter 35 — The Quarry Negotiations The road outside the south gate ran gray with stone dust, as if the city had ground its teeth and spit. Wind pushed the powder into little ridges that broke against ankles and boot soles. Beyond the last boundary marker, the land dropped abruptly into the old cut, the quarry that had built Aramore’s walls, and then outlived their usefulness. Ramps spiraled down in widening scars. Timber staging clung to the pit’s sides like tired ribs. Halfway down, someone had made a fort out of scaffolding and fear: lashings knotted until the rope looked like bone, wagons rolled broadside and spiked, a palisade of quarry poles braced by rock. Fire-smoke lifted, thin and mean. Yara stood motionless at the lip and looked until she could trace and name the lines of the pit below. Varrek shaded his eyes and spoke without pointing. “Two working descents,” he said. “Third looks collapsed on purpose. They’ve stacked spoil there like a berm. Fresh chisel marks. They expect us to come heavy.” “We aren’t,” Yara said. Rolen, farther left, rolled a pebble down with the side of his boot. It skittered, hopped, and vanished into chalk-dust. “They’re low on water,” he said. “Buckets drying on the rope. There are fewer than ten fires cooking. That palisade’s more for courage than defense.” Courage counts , the Gem murmured under Yara’s sternum, pleased. They cooked it until it smelled like food. Now eat the smell and leave the pot. Yara breathed once, slowly, and tightened her scarf against the grit. Behind her, the Iron Defenders arranged themselves at an angle that had nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with a lesson. These were the thirteen that she had made from the guards who refused to surrender; their eyes had the flat attention of tools waiting to be picked up. Fragments of uniform remained: a torn cuff with rank braid, a pauldron whose crest someone had tried to scratch off and failed. Spears held just so, shields at a cant that said you’ll break before we do. “These were your city guards,” Yara said, not raising her voice. The quarry heard anyway; places built for echo do that. “They refused too long.” Below, heads turned in patches as if the word refused moved at different speeds through men. Someone shouted for quiet, and quiet decided to be generous. Yara started down the near ramp, Marcus at her shoulder and Sam and Harry a step behind, matching her pace without the effort it would have taken yesterday. Their new names fit like well-used handles; the weight in their bones hummed green with recent fixing. She let the Defenders follow in two ranks, far enough back to read as a threat, near enough to read as certainty. Varrek and Rolen took the outer line, where archers would have shot if anyone had kept enough arrows to waste. The first guard post was a cart laid on its side, with two men behind it holding quarry picks like halberds. They weren’t stupid; they knew better than to pretend the cart would stop anything iron. Still, they held their ground until Yara stopped where the ramp widened to let a wagon pass. The men saw the Defenders and hesitated, putting weight on the wrong foot. “Lady,” one of them said, testing the word on his tongue like a pebble, uncertain if it would cut. “We… we weren’t told to expect talk.” “You were told to expect hunger,” Yara said. “This is what that looks like when it keeps men alive.” The man nodded, his mouth tight and silent. “Take us to the speaker, or speakers,” Yara said. “If there aren’t any, bring the man pretending not to be one.” They frowned at being so exposed, casting uneasy glances toward each other and the approaching group. But under the weight of Yara’s presence, they obeyed without more protest. They reached the fort-about-scaffolding and found a gate built out of two doors stolen from somewhere grander, set on their sides and barred with a timber that had been a support beam in a happier quarry. Inside, five men and a woman waited with