Epilogue Tripp
When Tripp was a child, he’d been allowed to sleep in the church.
Not always, and not on Saturdays, but Pastor David had found it in his heart to let him in from the cold—he and the other Scurry orphans.
On Saturdays, Tripp had to break in through a door in the back of the nave.
The wood was so rotted it bent under pressure.
Enough for a skinny hand to fit through, just enough to slip the bolt.
He thought God probably didn’t mind. He never stopped him, in any case, and as for Sunday mornings…
well there weren’t many in Scurry who worshipped. In the winter, there were none.
Except the Harrows; the mother and the girl, Nina.
Tripp watched them often. The church was full of shadows, full of places to hide. He found there was no need to go out into the cold if he was still and quiet. They would come, sit, pray, talk, then leave.
Tripp thought they must have been the good, devout sort. Which explained his immediate trust in Harland, the mother’s brother. These things—religion and goodness—they ran in families.
Harland Seymour had been a saving grace when Tripp was a kid. He’d employed him in the mines, given him somewhere better to sleep. He found he liked the tunnels more than the other lads. He’d spent his formative years out in the open. Close spaces, he’d found, were a welcome change.
He didn’t need the bluff the way the other men did.
This had been the only point of contention between himself and Harland.
“This here,” he’d said to Tripp, smearing ink on his gums, “is the best cut you’ll find anywhere.
” He was an easily insulted man, but his cuts made Tripp feel ill, like his insides were eroding.
He stayed clear of them. He kept his mind.
He learned how to be a good miner for Harland.
How to be quiet and still and watchful. Harland’s shadow was a close space to occupy. Tripp was safer there.
The trouble was, of course, that boys—even orphaned Scurry boys—outgrew their shadows.
Tripp lined up with the rest of crew, Harland at the spearhead, and they faced the church. Strange, Tripp thought, to see it sunken in and burning. To have seen that same Harrow girl destroy it.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” said the Lord before them, and who’d ever thought they would see a lord in Scurry?
It was a strange way to address twelve Craftsmen, all with their hands bound, rifles pointed at them, two navy-robed Artisans at the Lord’s side, presumably fire Charmers. “My name is Lord Terrence Shop.”
Harland spat at the ground. His face was slashed by the most twisted snarl Tripp had yet seen. “This is our fuckin’ parish!” he growled. “You ain’t got no right!”
Tripp kept his gaze on the Lord, saw the bored look in the man’s eyes.
Lord Shop watched them in the manner a man would watch a roving herd.
The only intelligent creature among small-brained beasts.
“Believe me,” he said, apathetically. “I don’t intend to stay longer than is necessary.
My generals tell me that you are fighting men?
That you tried, valiantly,” he said with a slight sneer, “to stop the infantry’s procession from the station platform? ”
“That’s right,” Harland said defiantly, veins protruding in his neck. “That’s fuckin’ right!”
“They also tell me that you were seen using some very curious tactics to divert the infantry,” Shop continued, his tone unperturbed by the force of Harland’s. “Levitating garden stakes, for example.”
“Aye!” said Harland, his breath fogging in a great cloud. “And now you find yourself evenly matched.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Shop said calmly. “It’ll take quite a bit of practice before that idium you stole can be put to any use.”
“It ain’t stolen,” Harland said, viciously. “We took what was ours! Every bit of terranium here is ours!”
“I don’t disagree.”
This brought Harland up short. He seemed to cease his rampage, eyes narrowing, the cloud of his breath evaporating.
“I’m here to discuss a business arrangement,” Lord Shop said. “One that I think will benefit us both greatly.” Lord Shop seemed to wait for Harland to speak, which he didn’t.
But Tripp did. He lifted his head and said, very carefully, “You need miners.”
Shop turned to him and nodded with the air of polite surprise, as though Tripp were a dog who had just performed a trick.
“Well done,” he said, nodding. “I do indeed need miners.” He turned to the group at large, all of them on their knees beneath him.
“I presume you’ve each helped yourself to a dose of idium.
By now, I daresay you’ve already felt the zeal course through you, that sense of potential. The vibrance and promise of it.”
None of them contested this. Even as the Lord spoke, Tripp felt his blood thrum, felt the world sharpen.
“If you want more,” Shop said slowly, precisely, as though he were speaking to simpletons.
“The ore will need to be exhumed. Now that the concern of unstable ground has been… neutralized,” he perused the burning, crumbled ruins of Scurry.
“There should be nothing to inhibit you from doing so. And you will need to tell me where Mr. Colson is hiding, I’m afraid.
There’s no need to harbor him any longer.
I assure you, no harm will come to him.”
“Fled, hasn’t he?” Harland grunted. The muscles of his latticed arms flexed. “Fuckin’ coward.”
At this, Lord Shop’s face transformed into a glower. “For your sake, I hope you’re mistaken.”
Harland only fumed and pulled at his restraints.
Tripp felt a reluctant resolve swell in him. “And what if you don’t need him?”
Lord Shop turned to Tripp. His eyes masked themselves once more. “There can be no idium without an Alchemist,” he said impatiently.
Tripp steeled himself. Once it was done, it could not be undone.
He felt the restraints at his back, and in his pocket, the hard-edged lump of terranium ore. He felt it as though it were an extension of his hand. Felt his fingers close around it in his mind.
Slowly, unsteadily, the rock lifted from his pocket. It rose, dropped, rose again. It turned in place before his eyes, before finally wavering and falling to the dirt.
He could have sworn he saw something rabid in the Lord’s expression.
“That’d be me, then,” Tripp said, “wouldn’t it?”