Bayne

Bayne loosed a primal yell as he fell, the golem’s eyes glaring down at him like two glowing coals. He braced himself to die, but hit the ground too soon.

No, not ground. Metal! A metal cage scooped him up mid-air.

No, not a cage. A hand!

Bayne sat up as the great metal fingers opened. A hooded figure peered at him above the golem’s chest plate. Someone was driving his machine!

“Who are ye?” he yelled. It came out as more of a croak.

The hand dropped like a dumbwaiter and Bayne threw his arms around a giant metal finger as his stomach plummeted along with it. When the hand reached the cave floor, he scrambled off, tripped over a clump of earth, and went sprawling. He cowered at the sight of the great monster looming over him, but its ruby eyes were dark and dead and it was bent over double like a broken stalagmite. As quickly as it had awakened, it had powered down completely.

How curious.

A figure emerged from the golem’s cockpit and found the rungs, scurrying down them like a rat. The figure was dwarf-sized, but too thin and lithe to be a Dwarf.

“Ye there!” Bayne cried, struggling to his feet. “Stop!”

His knees wobbled as he lurched after it to the back of the chamber. Its eyes were wild under its hood as it paused to shove a small boulder out of the way, revealing a tunnel so narrow Bayne couldn’t have crawled through it.

A tunnel? That’s how it’d gotten in? Orin would be furious. He’d installed the most secure locking system available on the door to Bayne’s workshop, and this little spy had simply dug its way in with a hand shovel. He seized it by the shoulders. It whipped round and sunk its teeth into the meaty part of his forearm.

Bayne cried out and let go, sparing a moment to survey the crescent of bite marks. Thank the rubies he kept a healing kit here.

The figure lunged for the opening, but he snatched out a hand and grabbed its hood. A tide of shiny, dark hair spilled from beneath the cloth, along with a gasp as the hood choked her. The child turned on him in fury, small fists clenched, large, dark eyes flashing in a face as pinched and brown as an owl’s.

“An Imperial girl-child?” he breathed, releasing her as if she were a snake. He’d never seen one up close before.

She dove for the tunnel again, but he had the presence of mind to seize her ankle.

“Stop! Please. I won’t hurt ye.”

He didn’t know why he said it. She was an Imperial, not to be trusted even in times of peace, and she had glimpsed their secret weapon. She would have to be executed as a spy. It would involve a lot of paperwork, and Orin would no doubt blame him for the breach. She glared at him in silence, the way Dayne used to when he was hungry, brows knitted in tiny baby fury. He could not even guess how old she was. She was about his height, maybe even taller, but Imperials grew differently. Her feet were bare, like his, but filthy in the way of a person who was not accustomed to wearing shoes. Her legs were like two cotton-wrapped twigs under the hem of her cloak. Bayne wondered how they didn’t snap in two with the stress of walking.

She must be very young, not yet old enough to be on her own, yet she had saved him.

Bayne’s brain spun with the possibilities—what he should do, what he wanted to do, the hardest thing to do, the easiest. When Ruthie was alive, she’d been the one to filter the world for him. And to filter him for the world. What would she say?

Ye have a heart in there somewhere, Dwarf. Listen to it.

“Thank ye,” he said to the little girl. It was a start and the least he could do before turning her over to the Conclave.

“‘Twere the right thing to do.” Her voice was husky for a girl-child.

Bayne tugged at his short, rough beard. He needn’t turn her over right away. He could ask her a few questions first. “The golem...” His gaze flicked over to it, bent double in its geriatric pose. “Ye drove it, did ye not?”

Her head bobbed once in agreement.

“What was it like?”

It was not an appropriate question to ask, given the circumstances (even he knew that). They’d just suffered a severe quake, chunks of fallen earth littered the ground, and the sodium lights still flickered. His friends inside the mountain could be injured. He himself had almost died. Perhaps the Imperial child had kin she was worried for as well. It was not an appropriate question at all, but they’d both been part of something extraordinary that could not be ignored.

The waif’s dark eyes sparkled, and a grin crept across her narrow face. “‘T’was splendid.”

Bayne felt his beard split into a matching grin. Excitement sizzled like electricity through his body, as if he, too, had been powered up. The purple crystal! That had been the catalyst, and it had worked, if only for a short time, without being plugged into the generator! How? He had no idea. What kind of gem possessed so much stored power that it needed only touch a machine to activate it? And what could it do if it were plugged in?

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He’d seen another purple shard, when he’d fallen. He whirled and searched the rocky cave floor for the familiar glimmer. Brushing the crumbs of dirt off, he marveled at the size of it. The largest diamond they’d unearthed was only as big as the tip of his pinky, the largest emerald and ruby, twice that size. This thing was the size of a spanner handle and the color of field violets on fire. He’d never seen anything like it—not even amethysts. Amethysts were a watered-down purple or the pink of dried mineral beds. This was something else entirely. Something almost alive.

Bayne dragged a stepladder over to the golem, positioning it under the bent chest cavity, and used it to reach the generator compartment. The bank of quartz crystals shimmered above his head. The purple shard was too long and narrow to fit into the compartment. He attempted to jam it in anyway, but that didn’t work—the crystal wasn’t touching any of the others. He needed a wrench to bend the soft metal and make room for it.

He made to climb down for a wrench, but stopped when he saw the wrench was already hovering in mid-air, clutched in a small brown fist at the end of a toothpick arm.

“Thank ye,” he said hesitantly. It was the second time he’d thanked this scrawny Imperial girl. Why was she still here? If she’d known what was good for her, she’d’ve taken the opportunity to escape while Bayne was distracted. Then he wouldn’t have to report her, and the Conclave wouldn’t drown her as a spy in the icy underground currents of Foundation River.

But first things first. He had a potential solution to his long-standing problem, and wasn’t that why they’d assigned him to this project in the first place? He raised an eyebrow in the girl’s direction. “Did ye turn locomotion off before ye disembarked?”

She gave a solemn shake of the head.

That figured. He sighed. He couldn’t believe he was doing this. “Would ye mind crawling back in there?”

She didn’t hesitate before scaling the opposite side of the stepladder and hoisting herself inside the cockpit like a frog.

“It’s the lever on the left.” Bayne paused. “Ye do know yer left from yer right?”

“Do you?” she snapped.

Bayne wasn’t sure what she meant. Of course he knew his right from left. He was a grown Dwarf, not an Imperial child of questionable age. But it did not matter because her little hand went to the correct lever.

“Pull it all the way down as far as it will go,” he said, but she had already done it. Maybe she was older than he thought. She was certainly capable.

He worked the wrench into the space and bent the housing to make room for the crystal shard.

“Ready yerself!” he said, shoving it in. He barely got his hand out before the quartz crystals lit up like firecrackers, blinding him. Electricity arced from the generator in the golem’s chest to each limb and upward, sparking from one cable to another. Finally, the golem’s red ruby eyes swelled to life. Bayne held his breath. Plugged into the generator like this, it should power the golem for an extended time, unlike the crystal that had bounced into the machine’s innards and accidentally sparked it to life.

But would it sustain?

The red eyes did not falter. The quartz crystals inside the generator blinked, signaling that they’d been activated. It was working!

“Move an arm!” he cried, barely able to contain his ecstasy.

A whirring sound, and the right arm straightened and bent as if the golem were saluting in the midst of its awkward bow. Bayne peered up into the owlish face of the little Imperial girl, hanging face down, her features mostly hidden by shiny curtains of hair.

“Good,” he said. “Make it stand up!”

She worked the levers, seeming to know what to do without Bayne needing to explain it. That meant he’d labeled things well, he thought proudly. If a little Imperial girl could drive the machine, a Dwarf peacekeeper would have no trouble.

The colossal thing was much more frightening now that it was powered. That was by design. The girl was barely visible inside the chest compartment. She was like a seed, or the pit of a monstrous deadly fruit. An enemy on the ground would be so overwhelmed by the terrifying machine that he wouldn’t even notice it had a driver. That was by design, too.

A giggle rippled up from inside Bayne. “My turn!” he cried. “I want to drive it!”

They switched places. The cockpit fit him as comfortably as his tunic and breeches. The levers hummed in his hands as he tested the machine’s reflexes and practiced walking backwards and forwards. He laughed out loud as he crushed a fallen boulder between the golem’s steel palms. The sheer power of it was exhilarating. Bayne felt like an Elemental. Or a god.

“Thank the rubies!” he remembered to pray, under his breath. It was the first time his heart had felt full in a long time. He lifted the machine’s great arms to the ceiling and pumped its fists. At that moment, the power flickered, and the hydraulic pumps gave a dying whine. The machine’s lights all went out, and it was dead once again. It had lasted, what, half an hour?

No matter. He knew what he needed to do—find more of the crystals. Perhaps replace the quartz generator with this new, odd, power source. An entire bank of the purple crystals might keep the golem going for a day or more at a time. If he could find a way to re-charge them, he could keep it going indefinitely.

He unbelted himself from the cockpit and climbed down the rungs. His bare feet touched the stone floor just as the tumblers of the lock on the chamber door began to turn. Someone was here! He froze as the door groaned open.

It was his boss, Orin.

Bayne opened his mouth to announce that he’d done it—he’d found a way to power the golem! Then he realized it was pointless to announce such a thing while the machine was cold and silent. Not to mention, there was an Imperial spy in the cavern. He should start by turning her in.

The thought felt off-balance and confusing, like many of the social interactions Bayne suffered, but reporting the girl was the right thing to do. Imperial spies were a danger to the Dwarves and their way of life. Yes, Terris was at peace, but peace was only peace until it wasn’t. The Imperials kept their training camps alive; the Dwarves needed protection, too. Of course, the Imperial dragoons operated in the open, where the Wizards could keep an eye on them. If the peoples of Terris discovered the golems the Dwarves were re-animating right under their noses, they would be furious. It might even be considered an act of war, although Bayne would argue that progress was progress, not necessarily war. Not that they’d listen to him. Bayne wasn’t the most convincing Dwarf in an argument. Ruthie had always won all of theirs.

Why hadn’t the girl run when she’d had the chance?

Orin’s gaze swept over the golem, no doubt confirming it hadn’t been damaged. “It’s moved,” he observed. “Do ye have something to report?”

“Yes.”

Bayne looked around for the Imperial girl and found her crouching in the shadows. She looked so very small, not dangerous at all. He imagined her skinny brown arms struggling, her stick legs kicking as the Dwarf executioners held her under the icy water.

Perhaps he should say nothing to the Conclave. She was only a child, after all.

Would they really execute a child?

“What is it, then?” Orin followed his gaze. “What are ye looking at?”

Bayne snapped his head back, but it was too late. Orin squinted into the shadows and his eyes grew large.

“Who in the emeralds is that?”