An important conversation? With his brother? The idea puzzled Jonathan, but he was smart enough not to say that out loud. Maybe this was Marcus’ idea of an olive branch, Jonathan thought as he walked into the Tavern. Perhaps father had talked to Marcus. Maybe he was finally going to try to be a halfway decent brother, rather than the princeling without a kingdom he’d been ever since they moved away from the capital. Marcus took after their father almost as much as Jonathan took after their mother. He was taller and leaner than his younger brother, and his hair was nearly black as befitted a real earthblooded heir. He also had their father’s domineering presence, and for a boy like Jonathan who’d spent his whole life learning to obey that demeanor, it was hard to say no, even if he thought that maybe he should.
The barkeep along with a couple of the regulars looked at Jonathan with skepticism as he entered their establishment for only the third time in his life. He ignored them and walked over to Marcus with a feigned confidence, he wished he’d been able to summon for Claire. Some village boys liked to drink even at fourteen, if they could scrounge a little coin, but it wasn’t something Jonathan thought he would ever enjoy. Why would you pay money for a bitter draught that made your stomach queasy and your head foggy, when you could just have water instead?
“What did you want to talk about,” Jonathan asked when he reached the table and moved to sit down. Underneath that confidence though, dread was churning. The last important conversation he’d had with Marcus was whether or not his older brother would allow him to stay in his lands after he became Lord Shaw, or if he could kick him out like the useless burden he was while a couple of his friends laughed at the abuse. It was not an experience he wanted to repeat any time soon.
“Not here,” Marcus mumbled, his cheery demeanor cracking for a moment to reveal his real brother hiding behind his fragile facade. Jonathan couldn’t decide if that was troubling or reassuring, but there was nothing he could do in either case. “Barkeep. Pull a pint for my brother and another for me. We’ll be upstairs with my friends.”
“Make mine a small beer please,” Jonathan interjected, risking another look of derision from his brother, but this time Marcus said nothing and went up the stairs leaving Jonathan to follow in his wake. At least that was one mystery solved. His brother wasn’t without his normal flunkies, they were just upstairs, and up to who knows what. Jonathan tried to figure out what could possibly be so important that it needed to be a secret, but so unimportant that Marcus thought he could talk about it in front of the sort of men that he kept around him. He was sure he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.
When they got upstairs Marcus shut the door behind them and then gestured to Jonathan, “You all know my younger brother Jon, I’m sure, but what some of you might not have realized is that he’s the apprentice to that puffed up dwarf, Boriv!” Jonathan looked around the room and saw that he recognized almost everyone while they nodded or looked at him skeptically: Cristig, Ronnie, one of the guards that spent more time playing dice than standing watch, The Morely brothers, the miller’s boy whose name he couldn’t quite recall, and Annires, Marcus’ current paramore. The only person that Jonathan found he hadn’t seen before was the stranger sitting in the back of the room dressed like a dandy. Not even his father dressed in silk this far from court, and he was the richest person in the Dulcine valley.
“Does he have you polish his pile of silver coins all day boy?” one of the Morleys asked, to a gale of laughter.
“He probably just tends to those fireplaces they have going all summer.” The other said, “They pay him to get the firewood so they don’t have to go outside even in our frigid summers!” Everyone had another good laugh, and Jonathan was sure if his brother didn’t wrangle the conversation in a little they’d be perfectly happy to make jokes at the dwarves' expense for the whole night. He didn’t feel like it was a good idea to try to correct their mistaken impressions about the stone men though, so he just laughed along politely with the rest of them and waited for his brother to reveal the reason he’d dragged him into his own private court for the evening.
It turned out that all Marcus was waiting for was a fresh drink. As soon as the barmaid came up the stairs carrying the two mugs, he closed and barred the door behind her before barking, “Alright. Enough of all that. We know the dwarves are bastards. We all know what they’ve done, time and time again. Thanks to our friend Mr Faen though,” he nodded at the dandy, “We finally have a chance to put the shoe on the other foot for a change.”
Jonathan leaned forward, despite himself. Up until now the room had been just another raucous room, but now there was only tension and a bit of excitement as everyone waited for the other shoe to drop. “How are we going to do that exactly?" The miller’s lad asked. “We can’t put sawdust in the flour again - my dads gonna kill me.”
Marcus only laughed. “All of our other schemes were just to tweak their nose a little or make a little coin for gambling. That’s not what this is. This is the big score. This time we’re going to hit them where it hurts and the best part of it is they won’t even have anyone to blame for it.”
“Sounds too good to be true,” Ronnie disagreed, crossing his arms, “Dwarves always seem to be able to sniff out those that cheat em. It’s in their nature.”
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“True, true.” Marcus answered, “But if it was just an accident then there wouldn’t be anyone to have cheated them in the first place.”
“Then tell us,” Cristig demanded, “what’s the score?”
“When the trains run through town they’re mostly here to ship meat and grain to the great gleaming cities that lie below our feet.” Marcus said, “Everyone knows that. But what you all might not know is that they have whole different trades with the nobles and the rich in large cities like Ariand and Ranarra. Those things might never come to our little village, but they do travel through it now and then on the way to somewhere actually worth being.”
“You mean like gold and jewels?” Annires asked.
“Better.” Marcus responded, smiling at his girl. Annires was a very pretty girl, but Marcus tended to go through a new very pretty girl once or twice a year. Father would never approve of his heir ending up with a landless flaxen haired lass like her no matter how beautiful she was. “What we're after when it comes through tomorrow is worth more than its weight in gold, and if we can take it from the train when they aren’t looking, then - well then we can do whatever we want once the heat dies down, and if that means a few baubles for you–”
“Fine,” Ronnie said, “You make that sound awful easy, but the dwarves are going to keep something that valuable under lock and key, right? If you go after a score like that they’ll catch you for sure.”
“The Aetherite will be in two small kegs in the last car. If we—” Marcus explained.
Before he could finish though, the dandy finally opened his mouth for the night and interrupted him. “That’s not important,” he said with a faint accent, killing that line of discussion. “We’re not here to talk about the target - that’s my problem. The buyer has offered generous terms, and you’ll all get a cut. We’re here to talk about how we stop the train and distract the dwarves.”
“That’s right,” Marcus said, chastened. It was the first time Jonathan had ever seen someone besides their father put him in his place. “We can’t do this in the railyard. The stone men would definitely see something like that coming. So we’re going to stop the train just out of town… In the tunnel ideally.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?” The miller’s boy asked. “It would take more than a stray ox to bring that monster to a halt. You’d need a giant or an avalanche or…”
“Or this,” Marcus said, taking a small black stone that looked like nothing more than a piece of coal before setting it on the table. In front of his brother. “Can you tell me what this is Jonathan?”
“It looks like a lump of coal,” he observed, expecting this to be some kind of trick.
“I’d expect that from one of these guys,” Marcus said gesturing to the Morley brothers, “But you could try digging a little deeper.”
Jonathan met his brother’s eyes and nodded. In truth his heart had been going a mile a minute since Marcus had revealed this terrifying plan and the last thing he’d have expected was to be called on as some vital part of it. Robbing a train… Stealing from dwarves… none of that was going to end well, but now wasn’t the time to try to talk sense into him. He’d never listen in front of his friends like this, but maybe after, if they were alone he might. Jonathan took another swig of his warm beer to clear those unhelpful thoughts and then picked up the stone instead.
Whatever it was it definitely wasn’t coal. Not only was it unusually warm to the touch, but its surface was hard like a ceramic pot rather than flaky like the coal they used in the yard. Other than that there was nothing obvious about it, but there was something about the rock that called to him on a deep level. It wasn’t anything he could see, but it called to his blood. Instead of using his eyes, he reached out to the element of fire inside of it, to try to get a sense of what strange stone this might be and he immediately regretted it. Jonathan set the stone down on the table immediately, taking half a step away from it. This wasn’t a rock. This was a jewel of pure flame covered in a thin layer of ceramic. Even touching it briefly was enough to make him thrum with an intoxicating amount of power. “That’s a fire shard.” Jonathan said in amazement. “How in the blazes did you get a fire shard?”
“Consider it an operational expense,” The dandy smiled. “The cost of doing business.”
“Nothing like a little magic to ruin a dwarf’s day, right?” Marcus said. “When some unlucky bastard shovels it into the furnace they can say bye bye to the boiler.”
“How’s that one little rock going to damage the train exactly?” Cristig asked. “Ain't they made for turning rocks into fire with their dwarven magic?”
“A shard has more fire inside it than a whole ton of coal,” Jonathan answered, barely managing to avoid going off on a rant about how unlike his tutors they didn't know the first thing about dwarven magic. “This one has enough fire inside it to burn down the whole tavern.” The second revelation was enough to leave more than one mouth hanging open.
“That’s exactly right dear brother,” Marcus said, smiling, “And that’s exactly why you’re going to get it onto the train for us. Any of the dwarves that manage to survive the explosion will have a hell of a lot more to worry about than guarding their cargo. Jonathan swallowed hard as Marcus finally put the whole thing into stark contrast. His brother wanted him to sabotage a locomotive which would almost certainly lead to someone’s death.