Quartz
The Sunless World Book One
A sunless world. The lost Tower of Light. And the race to find it.
Rafe Grenfeld, diplomat and spy, has problems.
He’s just learned of the discovery of a legendary quartz pillar: his world’s most precious resource. But his informer died before revealing its location, and Rafe’s on the run in the hostile state of Blackstone.
Once, quartz powered magical devices, but the mages who created them are long gone. Now, veins of quartz give light to a dying world, and Rafe has competition.
Karzov, the notorious chief of Blackstone’s secret police, is also hunting for the pillar. Determined to claim it for his own country, Rafe forms an uneasy alliance with the mysterious and maddening Isabella. As dangerous magical artifacts resurface and dark forces close in, Rafe must tap into the lost powers of the mages to find and secure the quartz—before his world is torn apart by famine and war.
Quartz
is a fantasy novel.
Published by Rabia Gale
Cover art and design by
Yocla Designs
Copyright © 2015, by Rabia Gale. A
LL
R
IGHTS
R
ESERVED
This e-book is licensed for your enjoyment only. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Blackstone
R
AFAEL
G
RENFELD BURROWED DEEPER
into his nest of potato peelings and rotted cabbage leaves. The piercing wind-shriek of the stazis’ whistles had been silent for eight long gongs. His trousers were thoroughly soaked with old tea, soup, and other things he didn’t dare think about, and his sense of smell had shut down out of sheer self-defense.
It’s all gone wrong
. So much for all the negotiating and debating that had preceded the diplomatic mission to Blackstone. Even Lord Aynworth’s instructions for Rafe to be tactful—or at least just quiet—had been for nothing. The secret police had arrested Oakhaven’s embassy to a man, diplomatic immunity notwithstanding. Rafe had only escaped arrest because he’d broken curfew and gone out to retrieve a battered badge from behind a loose brick in Liberty Block. By the time he returned from his unsanctioned expedition, the embassy was surrounded.
Now Rafe was the only one who had even a hope of making the meeting with the Blackstone resistance.
Rafe shifted, trying to ease his cramped muscles. The compost dumpster shuddered, and he froze. It was a flimsy thing, a box made of thin sheets of steel, already deformed and rusting. Luckily, dumpsters in Blackstone were not emptied every day. Unluckily, they were bound to attract rats.
Solemn bronze notes shattered the silence, signaling the start of second shift. Blackstonians did not even get the last day of the year as a holiday.
Poor bastards.
Nonetheless, this was Rafe’s chance to move, unless he wanted to inhale the fumes of fermenting tea and sour soup for an entire workshift. Rafe moved the dumpster lid aside, inch by inch, and unfolded himself. The dumpster groaned as he clambered out, its sounds masked as doors banged, men called, and the overseers’ whistles blew.
Rafe eased out into the alleyway. Gas hissed as it flowed into the street-lamps. The steady click-click of the lighters preceded the dim blossoming of blue flames. Their dull flickering painted everything in pallor and shadow.
The dumpster lay between two of the workers’ compounds. The windows overlooking it were small and dark—Blackstone was much more frugal with light than Oakhaven. Clotheslines sagged at head-height. Mouthing an apology to the hapless owner, Rafe took a tunic and a pair of drawstring trousers, the shapeless faded garments of a Blackstone drone.
Except they didn’t call them drones here. Blackstone workers were citizens, comrades, brothers. Rafe stripped off his own well-tailored garments—dark trousers, brown jacket, and the once-white shirt—and donned his disguise.
He held the badge on his palm for a moment. It was shaped like a clenched fist and had taken Oakhaven two years and one death to acquire. Perhaps today it would prove its worth. Rafe tucked the badge into a pocket and pitched his Oakhaven clothes into the dumpster.
Rafe slipped out of the alley and hurried towards the sounds of muttering voices and shuffling feet. A crowd pooled in the brick-paved meeting square, growing ever larger as streams of men flowed in from the gated, concrete compounds. Selene, low in the sky, was a dirty white smudge peeking out from behind a squat building. Rafe clenched his hands to keep from making a good-luck gesture at his world’s only luminary. That was an Oakhaven affectation.
A chief overseer, holding the long staff of his office, bellowed instructions from a speaking box placed beneath a picture of the Father. The paint was pocked and bubbled, as if the Father of the People had broken out in boils.
“Sections Six and Seven to the pottery in Liberty Block!”
Rafe muscled into the crowd. He would be more suspicious if he lurked on the fringes. The stench of sweat and oil emanating from his companions was a relief. His stint in the compost dumpster had actually helped his disguise.
“Sections Eight and Nine to the foundry in Fraternity Square. Section Ten on unloading duty at the docks.”
The docks. Unattended boats and bridges beckoned, enticing him with escape. Rafe was a fair swimmer. He might even make it across the river.
No. There was no way he could return to Oakhaven, to Uncle Leo, without the information the Blackstone dissidents were so desperate to share.
Rafe put his head down and joined Sections Eight and Nine.
The note he’d received from the resistance had simply said “In the old theater, three gongs into second shift, day before Greater Girdlesday”.
The old theater lay in a rundown district not far off the route to Fraternity Square.
The men of Sections Eight and Nine formed a loose knot as they followed their overseer, a short bandy-legged man with a baton stuck through his belt, through the narrow streets. The gas lamps were turned low and spaced widely, with long stretches of shadow between them. Rafe stumbled over a loose stone, and muttered a curse. One or two men gave him incurious looks, the rest yawned or stared at their feet as they trudged along.
Rafe wished he had grabbed a cap. Every time they passed through a splash of light, Rafe was conscious that he, of average height in Oakhaven, was taller than the compact Blackstonians. His hair was brown and longer than their dark, cropped heads. He hunched his shoulders and made himself small.
Stazi whistles in the distance sheared through the night air, followed by yells and a scream that set Rafe’s heart pounding. Sweat prickled the back of his neck.
The men stopped, muttering. The overseer peered over his shoulder and grinned fiercely. “Section Ten at the docks was a trap. Hopin’ to lure one of them flamin’ royal ass-kissers out into the open. Looks like they found their man.”
A cheer went up. Rafe joined in with a wordless cry that might have meant anything.
Had
another member of the Oakhaven party escaped the arrest at the embassy? Hope bloomed and withered in an instant. If yes, the stazi had just caught him and Rafe could do nothing about it.
He had to keep that appointment at the old theater.
One of his companions peered at him, glance sharp as a knife. “Hey, you. You the new fella from Three?” His voice was too loud in the chill dead air.
The gazes of the surrounding men focused on him, no longer sleepy, but suspicious and alert.
Rafe was caught in the middle. There was nowhere to run.
“About time you noticed, citizens,” he snapped. “You’ve performed poorly, very poorly, all of you.” He straightened, using his height to command their attention, and glared as if they were sloppy new recruits. “What if I had been an enemy? I could’ve used you as cover, slipped into the foundry, sabotaged our work, carried our secrets to those dancing dandies in Oakhaven. Then what, eh? The Protector relies on your zeal to keep us safe and you have proven unworthy.”
The men cringed. The overseer strode up to Rafe. “What’s goin’ on here? I was told nothing of this. Who are you?”
Rafe turned a look on him the intensity of a Shimmer megalamp. “Do not question the Secret Fist.” He raised his clenched hand, opened his fingers. Light caught the curves of the metal badge.
The terror was palpable. The men nearest him swayed back, though their feet seemed to have fused to the pitted street. The overseer paled.
Time to make a graceful exit.
Rafe bestowed a thin-lipped smile on the man. “However. Tardy as it might’ve been, you did notice that something was amiss. My report shall not be entirely negative. A few weeks of half rations and a dozen gongs of drill shall suffice. For all of you.” He glared at their stricken faces. A whiff of urine wafted to his already-besieged nose.
Impressive. The Secret Fist really
were
as bad as the reports indicated. Rafe could almost admire their fear-inducing qualities—in this instance it was very helpful—if he weren’t so set against their very existence. “Carry on, then,” he commanded. “To the foundry. And mind you do not speak of this to your comrades in other sections. Their time of testing will come.”
The overseer managed a garbled, “Yes, Citizen-Commander-Comrade!” and bowed and backed his way out to the front of his group. He squeaked out orders and the men formed themselves into a tight terrified square. They marched away at a military pace dangerously close to a run.
Rafe waited until they disappeared from sight and melted into the darkness in a way he hoped a real member of the Fist would’ve done.
Rafe pressed against the crumbling brick of one of the buildings that surrounded the old Royal Theater. Most of these buildings were abandoned, their windows boarded up and blind, their backs turned on this fallen symbol of hated noble privilege. That the Royal Theater still stood was a testament to its sturdy design and good workmanship. Its gilt and silver had long been stripped and its statuary defaced. Pale gashes in the smoke-blackened façade showed where marble had been carved out and removed.
The front of the theater, he noted, was dimly lit by the only working gas lamp in the square. Why would that be on, with no one living here and few to pass this way?
Rafe’s gaze swept beyond the theater and over the other buildings, probing. Some of the windows were unshuttered. He scanned them, and was rewarded with a flicker of movement in one.
Rafe slid along the walls until he found the entrance to the occupied building. Had the dissidents posted a guard?
Or was this another trap?
Rafe slid out of his scuffed boots and soft-stepped up concrete stairs in his stockinged feet. There’d been movement here, and recently. There was a disturbed quality to the air, the suggestion of sweat, the faint trace of food.
Boots trudged overhead. Rafe paused, listening. The tread spoke of a weary boredom. Whoever it was had been doing this a while. Rafe counted steps coming and going, then waited for the scuffle of the guard turning around. He inched up the last few steps and peeked out at the landing.
A hallway ran the length of the building, and the guard who paced it looked glazed, as if he’d been subjected to a history lecture by Rafe’s old tutor. Faint light came through the doorway of the one room that had been opened.
It was no great feat to slip into the room behind the guard’s back, to walk up to the two stazi crouched sill-level at the window, and tap the leader—identified by the rank bars on his uniform—on the shoulder.