Excerpt

Gu Non couldn't stop thinking about the magic. They'd lied to her about it. They'd lied to everyone.

No one lied to Gu Non.

She crept through the stone passageways of the mine, following the robed figure. Clumsy, she tripped, and a rock skittered to one side. Holding her breath, she pressed against the jagged wall. Her neck bent forward uncomfortably.

Te Ruk swung around. "Who's there?" he called. "I order you to show yourself." Orders were important here. They maintained function. Safety depended on function. Safety was life.

Gu Non wasn't so great with orders. But she knew what she'd seen, and bad air if she was going to leave before she found the truth of it. Patient, she waited. More patient, she stayed in place when Te Ruk set off again, knowing he'd stop, or turn around suddenly. Mages were smart. But she was smarter.

Pick. Pick. Check.

She left again, watching her feet more carefully now. Staying on the pads of her shoes, she was glad Te Ruk's lamp left a little glow behind it, for she didn't know where she'd find a candle without risking too serious of trouble. Supplies were so low, even her parents only had one a week for their whole allocation.

The irony of having twelve siblings was that, though they were one of the most making-do families in the mine, they had one of the larger allocations. Almost half of a sleeping dorm, and they only had to share the stove with four families.

Gu Non wondered how many families Te Ruk had to share with. Except, he was clan Mage. They probably had it better. Everyone had it better than clan Mine. Craps, they had to.

No longer seeing the glow of Te Ruk's lamp, she worried she'd let him get too far away. She stumbled in the dark, feeling her way along the cool walls.

At each juncture, she strained to hear the way he'd gone, and she was only mostly sure she'd got it right. Then, she saw the lamp's glow again, and she waited for it to fade before sliding into the large room, staying in the shadows of the corner.

A window! She almost fell over in shock. Grabbing at the wall to steady herself, she gaped at the opening across the room, in what must be an outland chamber.

Light—real, gold light—streamed in through the opening in the stone. Her heart tugged at her, willing her to reach it. What would it be like to stand in the light—would it feel warm or tingly, or would it have a smell? Like all miners, she had to stay between her crew's designated camp and their assigned mining location. And in all of Gu Non's thirteen years, she'd never stood in the light. Not the real light.

Irritated, she now understood why. If they let them stand in the light, they'd never return to the dark. Not without a reason. Not without answers.

Te Ruk collapsed against the wall, and he looked like a conjured message as the stream of light shimmered in the dust around him. Except he was not conjured, he was the one to conjure. She'd seen what he did. She'd seen him slip the blue fragment into the pocket of his too-short robes. Because Gu Non saw everything. You know why? Because she watched. Mages were given slack, but not so much that he could be here, in what looked like an abandoned camp, with a core fragment in his pocket.

Gu Non noticed that Te Ruk did not look well. His hands wrung against each other and his breath was fast. He had not hurried here, so he shouldn't be winded. She sniffed. The air smelled fine. Mages kept the air clean, especially around themselves, so it wasn't that. He was moving again. She refocused.

Te Ruk's shaking hand reached down into the pocket of his robes and pulled out the deep blue stone fragment, which began glowing with azure light. He was touching it with his hands, something all were forbidden from doing. Gu Non almost cried out in fear, seeing the blue glow creeping across his fingers, and the drawn agony of Te Ruk's expression.

Her fear turned immediately to fascination, as Te Ruk's body calmed and his eyes closed, and he levitated, just a shin or so above the smoothly cut floor. A flickering sphere of the azure glow grew around him. Eventually, his hand relaxed open, still glowing blue, but now empty. The fragment was gone—consumed, she supposed. Te Ruk lowered to the floor as the bubble around him disappeared.

There.

A lie.

The crew Bosses said the core fragments were burned as fuel, to maintain warmth inside the dome that Lord had built for them, the shield that protected the Varr. The warmth of the furnace replaced the warmth of their star, absorbed by the dome. But they needed the dome for safety from the constant bombardment of the everstorm. And so, the furnace must run. Without constant mining of the mountain's blue core, they would not be protected within the dome until Salvation, when the everstorm cleared and Lord was able to return.

And the mages, granted special powers by Lord to further protect the Varr within the dome, possessed special magic, only granted to those blessed by clan Temple. But the signature azure glow of magic had not come from divine blessing, it had come from the fragment.

Another lie.

Blessing or not, the core stone held the magic, not the mage. And Te Ruk, Gu Non was sure, was using it as a drug.

Eventually, Te Ruk stood and gazed out of the small window. Gu Non tried to imagine what he could see: the beautiful outland, protected by the shimmering glory of the amber dome. She wished she could see it too.

But she had what she needed. And she couldn't be caught here. She had to get to her shift, come up with a plan. Just as she realized Te Ruk was beginning to turn back, Gu Non slipped through the door and tiptoed, later running, until she was back within the safety of her assigned space.

Alarmed at the emptiness of the camp, she ran faster, not wanting more trouble with Ri Wid. Not now, not when she was making her own trouble.

With relief, she saw they were just lining up for shift. Ba Dos was staring out—he sagged a little seeing her, throwing her his "about time" look. She breathed in. She wasn't too late.

"You. Late again." Ri Wid grabbed Gu Non by the hair and swung her back toward the wall, where her shoulder hit a sharp edge. She held her breath to avoid crying out, but Ri Wid took the silence as insolence.

"You think you're above the rules, runt? I have plenty here to make my quota, and a couple more near commission. I don't even need you. There's plenty of spots in controlled labor." He tried to make the sound of a chain being shaken, but it just came out as ch-ch. And Gu Non wasn't going to describe how his gesture looked. Didn't need accuracy to make a turd-hearted point, she supposed. The message was loud and clear.

"You so much as pass gas, and this crew will never see you again."

And there it was. Gu Non avoided finding her mother's eyes in the crowd. She knew where they'd be, of course, Ri Wid was staring right at her with his extra-turd-hearted grin. Her mom had turned down his advances, well, pretty much every shift. So he taunted her every chance he got, like the cave slime that he was.

There were plenty of people here that would have serviced him for allocations, really, for almost nothing. But Ri Wid stayed obsessed and wouldn't let it drop. Her mom managed to deal with him, just as they all did. As long as they did their job and followed his rules, he couldn't go too far. At least, not with Te Ruk as their mage. Te Ruk was a lying mage, but he wasn't the worst. Ri Wid was the worst.

She'd deal with him for now. But now that she had her secret, one of these days, he'd deal with her.

"Something funny?" Ri Wid had moved in, hovering over her.

"Yes, actually," she answered, immediately regretting the slip. Controlled labor was pure misery, at least by the terrified silence of anyone who came back from it. And Ri Wid absolutely had the power to send her there.

"No, not funny," she amended. "Just grateful that Lord takes care of us. Grateful for another day to serve."

Hearing the words, the whole mining crew repeated them. "Grateful that Lord takes care of us. Grateful for another day to serve."

Ri Wid couldn't interrupt that, and with the moment lost, he threw her a warning glare then proceeded to lead the crew to their mining location.

It was going to be a long shift.