Parsellon Alterras, Provisional Governor of Devil’s Perch by the grace of Her Infernal Majestrix Queen Abrogail II, poured himself another glass of brandy, swirled the amber liquid while staring at it with every appearance of thoughtfulness, and wondered for the ten-thousandth time why his uncle couldn’t have purchased a better office for him. This arid spit of striped red rock lacked any semblance of prestige. Its people were a fractious and independent lot, as stubborn as the rocks they called home—and as poor. Governing Devil’s Perch had yet to line his pockets with anything but dust; all this place had ever given him was an overabundance of headaches.
One of those headaches was babbling at him right now.
Parsellon pinched the bridge of his nose and eyed the man over the brim of his brandy glass. He’d already forgotten the fellow’s name. Horvus? Sorlos? Some unshaven miner who drank too much and bathed too little and spent his days trying to scratch crumbs of gold from the unforgiving spires of Devil’s Perch.
When he’d first come to this godsforsaken place, Parsellon had believed that the gold mines might make his ten-year term as governor worthwhile. True, the posting was remote, and the newly established town of Blackridge—what was intended to eventually pass for the provincial capital—hopelessly dull. But if there had been gold here, he would have done his duty to Imperial Cheliax faithfully and without complaint, and then retired to Egorian to enjoy his well-earned spoils.
There was no gold. If there had ever been gold in Devil’s Perch, which Parsellon heartily doubted, it had all been mined out long before he arrived. All that remained were rumors and stories and desperate idiots chasing them through the canyons.
Well, the sooner he got rid of this idiot, the sooner he could enjoy his brandy without having it spoiled by the man’s odor. “Remind me again what you wanted?”
“A claim deed for a parcel around Crackspike,” the man said. He fumbled a greasy piece of leather from his back pocket and held it out to the governor.
Parsellon glanced at it long enough to ascertain that it held a crudely rendered map and waved the ill-smelling thing away. “A claim deed, you say?” That could be worthwhile. In order for Imperial Cheliax to recognize a miner’s claim on a previously unstaked piece of land, the miner had to formally file a request for it and be granted a deed. The filing fees on such deeds were not formalized. In theory, this was because the value and size of parcels varied, so a uniform fee would have been unfair. In practice, it was an open invitation to bribery. The Provisional Governor could set his fees as high or as low as he pleased—which would have been very useful, if anyone ever bothered paying them.
In fact, as Parsellon had learned soon after coming to Blackridge, hardly anyone did. The pitiful excuse for a town he governed had only the barest semblance of a militia, so there was no real enforcement for such deeds. Even more damaging, there was no reason for anyone to want or need a legal claim, because all the land in Devil’s Perch was worthless. No one could farm it, livestock starved and died on it, and there was nothing but sorrow to be mined.
But if this idiot wanted a claim deed, who was he to refuse? Provided the man could pay the filing fees. “These things can be expensive, you realize,” Parsellon said, stroking the scarlet velvet stole of his office. He’d had it trimmed with a band of gold brocade: a bit of an overstep, since only paracounts and higher were accorded gold in the courts of Cheliax, but one he judged unlikely to hurt him. These louts didn’t know any better, and no Egorian aristocrat would be setting foot in Devil’s Perch anytime soon.
He hadn’t offered his guest any brandy. The miner—Sorvus, that was his name—stared at the governor’s drink with open longing before shaking himself and returning to the matter at hand. “I can pay.”
“That’s a large parcel you’re requesting.” Parsellon glanced at the charcoal-sketched map. “It will have to be surveyed, checked for prior claims, registered before Her Infernal Majestrix’s clerks in Egorian…”
“How much?” the miner interrupted.
The Provisional Governor decided to overlook the man’s impertinence. If he felt entitled to be so rude, he was clearly an eager mark. “Fifty golden sails,” he decided aloud. An impossible sum, unless the miner really had struck something worthwhile in those rocks.
“Here.” Sorvus dug a callused hand into a dirty pocket and came up with a handful of dingy gray rocks, which he spilled over the top of the governor’s desk. He untied a filthy sack from his belt and tossed that alongside them. The sack’s mouth sagged open, revealing grains of blue-black dirt. “Weigh it.”
“You can’t pay the fee in rocks,” Parsellon said, annoyed.
The miner squinted at him. He unhooked the horn-handled knife at his hip and scratched it along a particularly wriggly-looking rock, one shaped like a spoonful of batter dropped into hot oil. A shining line of white followed the dull blade’s score.
Silver.
That was why none of the hedge charms to find gold in Devil’s Perch had ever worked. There was no gold in those rocks. The fortune of the lawless west was silver.
Parsellon’s fingers twitched. He knotted them tightly in his ample lap. “Where did you find that?”
“You’ll take my claim deed?”
“Consider it signed.”
Sorvus nodded and spat on the floor. The governor didn’t correct him. “Two miles north-northwest of Crackspike,” the miner said. “Found these nuggets washed up after a canyon flood. The rest at the bottom of a water pit I dug. It’s in my parcel, mind. I’ve claimed it.”
“It is yours,” Parsellon assured him. He didn’t take his eyes off the silver. If all of that was pure, he had … what, a hundred gold sails’ worth sitting on his desk? Two hundred? How much was the man carrying? How much had he found? “That’s strix territory, though, isn’t it?”
“They call it theirs, aye. The black buzzards are thick up there. Probably why nobody found the strike before—or lived to tell about it if they did. Which brings me to the second favor I came to ask you.”
“Ask.”
“Send word to Citadel Enferac. We’ll need Hellknights to keep the swoops at bay if we’re to get the silver out of Crackspike. It’ll be hard enough mining ore out of those rocks without worrying about the strix. Scare them off, or I’ll never get the men I need to make my find good. A company or three of Hellknights will go a long way toward convincing outsiders it’s safe enough to come and work here.”
“You’ll need that many workers?” Parsellon asked.
“Oh, aye, no question of it. The find’s good.”
“Well, I’d be remiss in my duties as governor if I didn’t do all I could to help Devil’s Perch flourish.” Parsellon gestured to his bodyguard, Thantos, a hulking and taciturn man who had not budged an inch from his post by the door for the entirety of their conversation. The provisional governor sometimes wondered whether the man blinked. “Quill and paper, if you please.”
Wordlessly Thantos set them before him. Parsellon dipped the quill and, glancing occasionally at the miner’s map, sketched out the area to come under Sorvus’s claim. Then, with a flourish, he signed his name at the base and pressed his official seal to the paper.
“There,” the governor said. “Sorvus’s Strike is yours. I shall have my clerk draw up a copy to send you before the day’s end. The original, of course, must go to Egorian to be properly recorded. Rest assured that I will dispatch it as soon as the appropriate security measures are arranged. It’s quite a claim you’ve made here. We wouldn’t want it to get lost. But the strike, my good man, is yours.” He motioned to his brandy carafe. “May I offer you a toast to fine fortune?”
“I wouldn’t say no,” Sorvus replied. The apple of his throat bobbed.
“Thantos! Another glass.” Parsellon poured a liberal measure and offered it to his guest. And another. And, when the man continued to swill good Chelish brandy like Isgeri barrel-wash, a third.
Five glasses in, Sorvus was blind drunk. Parsellon, who had nursed his original glass throughout while toasting his guest’s every sentence, gave the inebriated miner a confiding smile.
“So tell me,” he said, “just how much silver is there in your strike?”
“Don’t know.” Sorvus set his glass aside unsteadily and tried to lay a finger alongside his broken nose. He missed, although he didn’t seem to notice. “A lot. I went upstream when I found that bit I gave you. Found … a lot. Under the rocks it’s soft. You can … you can shovel it right out.” The miner mimed throwing a shovelful of dirt over his shoulder, nearly upsetting his glass. He didn’t seem to notice that, either. “Looks like sludgy black dirt, but you cook it down with salt and mercury and you can see, it’s silver. It’s all silver. Barrels of it. Wagons.”
“We’ll need soldiers to protect that,” the governor mused. “Or Hellknights.”
“Aye.” Sorvus tipped the last of the brandy down his gullet. “The swoops didn’t trouble me none, but I’m just one man and I know the canyon ways. We’ll need a lot of workers to mine out the strike, and they won’t know the first thing about surviving out here. Maybe if I could hire men from Pezzack, but…”
“There will be no traitors tolerated in Devil’s Perch while I’m governor,” Parsellon said firmly. Softening his tone, he added: “Besides, how would that look to the throne? Or the Hellknights?”
“Not good.” Sorvus grimaced. “No Pezzacki. That means outlanders. Lots of ’em. And that means trouble with the strix.”
“Let me worry about that. You just enjoy your good luck. There’ll be plenty of time for work soon enough.” Parsellon stood and nodded toward Thantos. The towering bodyguard took the miner’s shoulders, helping him gently but inexorably toward the door.
When the miner was gone, Parsellon yawned and cracked his neck. His eyes fell on the greasy leather map, which Sorvus had neglected to pick up before he left.
Wagons of silver …
Thoughtfully, he rubbed the soft, dirty leather between his thumb and forefinger. That much wealth would make Devil’s Perch a magnet for prospectors, and everything that went with them: cooks, barkeeps, whores, dealers in horses and mining equipment … rough trades, to be sure, but profitable. Very profitable. And they’d all be under his jurisdiction.
His gaze strayed back to the center of the map. Crackspike. An ugly little landmark, that was. The first team of prospectors to run afoul of the strix, nearly twenty years ago, had been tortured to death. While bloody but still alive, they’d been staked out for the venomous yellow hill ants to devour, and they had been left there until nothing remained but bare bones.
Then the black-winged bastards had gathered up their victims’ bones and cracked them apart with their own mining tools and made the whole thing, broken spikes and broken bones and all, into a morbid sculpture in the shadow of one of their holy stones.
That was Crackspike: the strix’s way of saying that the barren red rocks were their land. Human interlopers were unwelcome.
Hellknights didn’t die as easily as prospectors, though, and with Citadel Enferac’s support, the governor was quite confident that the strix could be pacified.
Securing that support, however, could prove costly. The various Hellknight orders were always interested in raising their power and prestige relative to rival orders, and in extending the rule of law over an uncivilized land … but convincing them to protect a single man’s silver claim, however rich, could be a difficult proposition.
Considerably easier if that claim belonged to the throne. Considerably more profitable, too.
The door opened. Parsellon looked up as Thantos stepped in, wiping a spatter of mud from his breeches. “What do you think of all this?”
“Lot of changes coming,” the big man replied. “Probably a lot of blood. You want me to start hiring swords?”
“A sensible precaution, if you can find good ones. We’ll still need the Hellknights, though. Find a fast rider who can take a message to Citadel Enferac. For Vicarius Torchia’s eyes only.” The Provisional Governor tapped his fingers against his desk, looking at the map again. “That miner … Sorvus. Does he have a wife? Any kin?”
Thantos grunted. “He had a woman for a while. A Pezzacki. I forget her name. Pox-scarred, but not bad to look on. She left two years ago. Went back to Pezzack. It’s a hard life for a woman out here.”
“It’s a hard life for anyone. Any issue?”
“You mean children?” Thantos shook his heavy head. “No. A sickling son who died. Think that’s why his woman left. No other kin.”
Parsellon nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a shame.” After a final glance, he rolled up the map and slid it into one of his desk drawers. “When you send the rider to Citadel Enferac, tell him to mention to Vicarius Torchia that the man who found the silver strike was, regrettably, killed only a day after making his claim. A robber, most likely. He was flashing his money around too much in a bar. These things happen in a lawless town.”
“They do,” Thantos agreed neutrally.
“This tragedy only underscores the importance of having Hellknights here to keep order.”
“It does.” The big man tapped the hilt of the knife at his belt, then reached for the doorknob. “I’d best dispatch that rider soon. Wouldn’t want his tidings to prove stale. Make the other arrangements, too. Anything else?”
“Is there a tailor in town at the moment?”
“Widow Lascia takes in washing. Believe she does a little mending, too.”
“Good.” The governor plucked the stole from his neck and held it out to his bodyguard. He hated to give it up, but if he was going to draw the eye of Egorian to his long-ignored corner of the empire … “Tell her to take off the brocade.”