In the damp shadows of the drift mouth, Tie Shan worked with the gentleness of a mother tending an infant.
The giant tore a strip of clean burlap from his own trousers, soaked it in cold spring water dripping from an upper crevice. Then he carefully wiped the coal dust from Lin Tao’s scorched right palm. The skin was blackened and blistered. He smelled of burned horn-protein and iron scale, but the tendons beneath remained intact.
Tie Shan reached into a crack in the wall. He pulled out a clump of thick, emerald-green moss that grew near the fresh-water seeps.
“Mountain moss,” Tie Shan rumbled, crushing the cool vegetation between his scarred palms until a clear, astringent sap dripped out. He pressed the crushed moss firmly against Lin Tao’s burned palm. “Cooling. Stops the fire.”
The herbal sap bit into the scorched nerve endings. That brought a wave of shivering relief that lowered Lin Tao’s skin heat by several degrees.
Lin Tao leaned back against the dry dark rock wall, his chest heaving as his pulse gradually settled from its racing panic.
“Tie Shan,” Lin Tao murmured. He looked at the young giant’s scarred face in the dim light of the oil lamp. “Why do you stay in this pit? With your strength, you could break the timber gate and vanish into the southern forests.”
Tie Shan didn’t look up from binding Lin Tao’s hand. His thick fingers moved with practiced care, wrapping the burlap strip around the moss and securing it with a clean knot.
He sat back on his haunches, his dark eyes staring into the underground gloom.
“My brother,” Tie Shan said. His voice dropped into a low, gravelly rasp that barely carried over the dripping water. “His name was Tie Gang. He was smarter than me. Knew how to read numbers. Knew how to weigh stone.”
Lin Tao listened in silence, not interrupting.
“Three years ago,” Tie Shan continued, his jaw muscles clenching until the skin turned white. “Hu was stealing ore from the high drifts. Gang saw the false weights. Gang went to Disciplinary Elder Song with the tally sticks.”
Tie Shan paused. His massive chest rose and fell in a slow, shuddering breath.
“Song took the tally sticks,” Tie Shan whispered. “Song gave them to Hu. That night, three overseers came into the barracks with a pig-killing knife. They cut Gang’s throat while I was held down by four men. Then they threw him down the air-flow shaft.”
Tie Shan looked down at his own massive, scarred hands.
“I stayed,” the giant said softly. “To find his bones. To break Hu’s neck. I thought I’d die doing it.”
He reached behind a loose block of dark rock. He pulled out a small wooden box wrapped in oiled canvas. Inside the box rested a dozen notched tally sticks. The original physical evidence of Hu’s embezzlement that Tie Gang had hidden before his murder.
“Gang’s sticks,” Tie Shan said, holding the box out toward Lin Tao. “He died for this wood.”
Lin Tao took one of the notched wooden sticks in his uninjured left hand, examining the precise notches carved along the edge. Each notch represented fifty baskets of high-grade copper flux siphoned from the Upper Sect’s share.
“You kept this for three years?” Lin Tao asked quietly.
“Waiting,” Tie Shan rumbled, his head bowed. “Waiting for a man who could read them without being bought. The elders don’t care about dead slaves, but they care about stolen silver.”
Lin Tao looked at the tally sticks, then into Tie Shan’s eyes.
“You broke Hu’s arm without touching him,” Tie Shan said. “You stopped the mountain from falling. You saved eighty men from the gas. From today, my life is your shield. Where you walk, I stand.”
Lin Tao looked at the young giant.
In a world governed by corrupt algorithms and rotting Precursor firmware, a loyal, rock-steady physical anchor was worth more than ten thousand high-grade spiritual stones.
Lin Tao reached into his sleeve, took out the clay pot jar of bear-animal fat salve from his spatial ring. Then he scooped out a dollop with his left hand. He rubbed it gently into the rope-burned scars across Tie Shan’s shoulders.
“We’ll find your brother’s bones,” Lin Tao said quietly. “And we’ll not die in this pit.”
“Hu is in the sick room,” Tie Shan whispered, his eyes narrowing. “His arm is broken, but his mouth still lives. He has cousins in the Upper Sect.”
“Then we’ll ensure his cousins receive an audit they can’t pay,” Lin Tao said, resting his hand on his knee. “A corrupt system always collapses under the weight of its own unchecked transactions. The deeper they dig their fraud, the more brittle the foundations become.”
The old miner on the shale pile stirred, looking at them with a mixture of awe and terror.
“You speak of clerks and ledgers, boy,” the old man wheezed, his clouded eyes wide. “You sound like the checker who came here before the war. He carried a bronze badge and spoke of laws. They dropped him into the salt crevice twenty years ago.”
Lin Tao felt the heavy iron checker’s badge resting inside his spatial ring.
“The checker died,” Lin Tao said softly. “His audit didn’t.”
Tie Shan stood up, picking up his iron pry-bar with both hands, his broad back straight as an iron column.
“Someone comes,” Tie Shan warned, his voice dropping into a rumble.
A loud, echoing clatter echoed down the iron haulage rails from the upper elevator shaft.
It was the sound of heavy iron-shod boots marching in rhythm. It was followed by the metal clinking of steel chains and the wild barking of two spiritual hunting hounds. Lantern light flickered against the damp dark rock walls as an armed patrol rounded the lower bend.
A messenger’s voice echoed down the tunnel:
“Decree from the Disciplinary Pavilion! Senior Elder Song orders all shift tallies frozen! An emergency check is underway in Sector Nine!”
The hunt was moving downward.