The central weigh yard of the Gray Pit was a vast, tiered arena of crushed gray granite dust. It was surrounded by three-hundred-foot upright quarry walls that rose toward the snow-dusted crags of Mount Sunder. It was noon, and the entire day shift of stonecutters, splitters, derrickmen, and wedgers had gathered in the yard. It was drawn by the sound of the steam explosion and the shouting at the headframe.
Seventy men and women stood in silent, dust-covered ranks, their heavy sixteen-pound sledgehammers, splitting chisels, and iron crowbars resting against their aprons.
Captain Vane Skarn and six surviving mercenary guards pulled back to the raised platform of the central weigh-station, their swords drawn, their breath pluming white in the freezing mountain wind. Behind them stood Chief Administrator Krend, clutching his fur mantle around his trembling throat.
“Arrest them!” Krend shrieked, pointing a shaking finger at Tomas’s party. “They’re escaped penal debtors! They sabotaged the central hoist! They destroyed company property! Five silver crowns to any man who cuts them down!”
Not a single quarryman moved.
Tomas Reed didn’t look at Krend. With slow, deliberate footsteps that crunched in the frozen gravel, Tomas walked to the center of the weigh-scale platform. The massive cast-iron balance where every block of mountain granite was weighed before shipment.
