Mercedes Lackey: Foundation

Bad Blood, because his parents were bandits and had been killed in a raid by the Royal Guard. Bad Blood, because he’d been found in a cradle in the bandit camp after. Bad Blood, so bad that no one had wanted to take him in and he’d been left at the local Temple of the Trine with priests who were probably not at all happy about being saddled with the care of an infant. But then along had come Cole Pieters.

Out of the kindness, the pure kindness of my heart, I tool ye.No one else wanted ye, not even the godly priests. They all knew what ye were. They all figgered one day ye’d turn on ’em. I am a bloody saint, I am, fer takin’ a chance with you.

And so the infant had begun life in the Pieters household with the imaginative name of “the Brat.” And from the moment his tiny hands could actually do anything, he’d been put to work, an unpaid, poorly fed, scantily clad, dirty little drudge. He was told, and he believed it, that he’d worked before he could walk, dragging a wad of rag-strips as he crawled, all unknowingly cleaning the floor with it. He’d been Brat for years, going from job to job in the household, from floor duster to spit turner, from pot washer to garden weeder until he was big enough to see over the side of the sluices. And that was when he’d gone to work at the mine.

And that was when he’d gotten the name of Mags.

Tap, pause. Tap, pause. He put his nose as close to the stone as he could and still see, examining the rock minutely.

He remembered that day. His only instruction had been to watch the older kiddies, do what they did, and look for things that sparkled and had color. He got the stuff that had already been picked over, no one really expected him to find anything. But as he had washed the gravel over and over again in his basin, watching not only the gravel in the pan but making sure he checked the stuff in the sluice as well, he had spotted something. It was no bigger than a grain of wheat, but it was bright, brilliant green. And then he found a yellow one, and a purple, and another green, a third green, and by the time the day was over, he turned over to his astonished overseer a little pile of tiny gem shards, a pile big enough to cover the palm of his hand.

“By the gods, Brat, ye’ve got th’ eyes of a Magpie!” Endal Pieters had exclaimed. And it was the same the next day, and the next, until they started calling him “little Magpie,” then Mags, and then—that was his name.

Carefully, Mags put thumb and forefinger to either side of the sparkly, and wiggled it, or tried to. Was it loose? Could he pull it out, like a baby tooth? That was always better than chipping it out.

He felt the thing give a little, heard the tiniest sound of grinding and—it popped out of its socket—in two pieces, not one, but they were both pretty big. He just wouldn’t say anything. Two sparklies meant a slice of bread,

“I ain’t hearing hammering!” Jarrik shouted. “I ain’t hearing hammering, Mags!”

“Pulled two!” he grunted back, took the time to get a drink from his bottle, and tucked the sparklies into the bag around his neck.

“That don’t mean no skylarkin’!” Jarrik shouted back. That was his favorite word for shirking lately.

“Gotta pee!” Mags retorted—which he didn’t, but his calves and thighs were beginning to cramp something fierce, and he could hear the donkey cart coming. He’d have to clear the tunnel, or at least stop working and cram himself in the end while the kiddie cleaned out the rock, so Jarrik shouted back his grudging permission and Mags backed himself down the tunnel he was working and into the larger shaft. The kiddie—named Felan, skinny, dirt-covered, lank-haired, and wearing patched up burlap breeks and shirt—didn’t even look at him, just plunged into the workings with his burlap bag. But Mags didn’t expect him to talk; he remembered when he’d been the donkey-boy and had been backhanded for talking to the miners.

Ye ain’t here t’ talk! Yer here t’ work!

Mags stretched his legs as he walked to the played-out seam they were using as the latrine. True waste rock went in here, burying the leavings before they started to smell too bad. The donkey-boy was in charge of that, too.

Mags didn’t know the kiddie all that well. So far as he was aware, the boy hadn’t spoken a word since he’d arrived. Well, that should make him poplar with Jarrik, whose every other sentence was “Too much skylarkin’!” or “Too much jibber-abber!” accompanied with the back of the hand.

Truth to tell, he didn’t really want to know the kiddie’s story. There were no good stories here. Every kiddie here was—wanted, burdens on their villages, bastards left on doorsteps, kiddies left orphaned—they arrived, more often than not with tear-streaked faces, and most of the time, their faces remained tear-streaked. There was little enough to be happy about here, after all.

The food was just enough to keep you alive and no more unless you somehow found or snatched some. They all slept together in a single cellar room without a fireplace, a room right under the barn and filled with hay and straw too old for the farm animals to eat. At least it wasn’t drafty, and being underground it kept from going below freezing and wasn’t too hot in the summer. They each got one threadbare blanket, so the best way to sleep was all bundled together in a ball like a wad of puppies, sharing body heat and coverings. Of course, that meant there were a lot of gropings among the older kiddies, but they all knew better than to futter. Everyone knew the story of Missa, who’d futtered and got a big belly. She got beaten and dosed until she lost the baby, and she was never right in the head after. And all the boys old enough to have been the daddy got a beating apiece. So nobody futtered.

Mags couldn’t figure out where Missa’d got the energy or the interest to do it anyway. He was always so bone-tired at the end of the day that he fell asleep as soon as he got warm, and there was nothing about anybody’s skinny body that made him want to put off sleep for even an instant. Maybe it was different for girls, they just had to lay there. Or maybe it would be different when he got older, in the spring and summer, when you didn’t ball up all together shivering. But right now his jakko was as tired as the rest of him, and wasn’t interested in a thing. Maybe when he was fourteen. He was only thirteen now, or at least, that was what Master Cole told the priest last time he came.

He kind of hoped it would stay that way. The idea of a few moments of sleep less to appease a part of him that had suddenly got ideas of its own had no appeal.

By the time he made it to the end of the played-out seam, he needed to be there anyway. So it was just as well he’d lied. It wasn’t bad; the donkey-boy had recently dumped rock here. He managed to shake the last of the cramps out on the way back, and crawled back into his tunnel, taking a shoring timber with him.

He always put in so many timbers that Master Cole sometimes shouted at him, but he never had a cave-in, and Master Cole couldn’t argue with that. He’d noticed on his way out that by his standards, the roof was overdue for a prop, so he brought one in and hammered it in place before going back to work.

Once again, he arranged himself at the face, and began working a little lower. Off in the distance, he heard two of the other kiddies start a timid conversation, quickly hushed when Jarrik roared “No jibber-jabber!”

He was starting to cramp again. All right, time to pull a fake. He had enough stones, he wasn’t going to get into trouble unless someone caught him at it—and to do that, they’d have to crawl down this tunnel and he would hear them coming. He stretched himself out, right leg first, then left, all the while tap-tap-pausing on the rock at the side of the tunnel with the chisel alone. Then he flipped over on his back and lay at full length, staring up at the ceiling only a little way above his face, still tapping.