Quartz Read Free Page B

they took all the lights with them.
    The ragged cries of
mercy! mercy!
followed Gorvich all the way into the square.

Chapter Two
Blackstone
    “W HO ARE YOU ?” R AFE trudged after the woman, ankle-deep in hot sticky muck. Her progress through the slush was barely a tickle at the edge of his hearing. In spite of himself, he was impressed, but he thrust that aside in favor of the adrenaline-fueled anger that kept both exhaustion and terror at bay.
    She half-turned, a dim figure lit by the luminescent growth on the tunnel walls. “Like you, I was invited to the meeting with Furin and Berlioz.” Her accent was hard to place. Those cool crisp tones and that blandness of expression could’ve belonged to any well-educated woman.
    “Do you represent another state? Clearwater, perhaps? Was the resistance looking to sell Blackstone military secrets to the highest bidder?”
    “They need funds in order to overthrow the Blackstone regime. Surely you can sympathize with their plight?”
    He refused to be led off-track into exploring his personal feelings. “Did they give any indication of what kind of information they had? Weapons development? Troop movements?”
    “Nothing whatsoever.”
    Rafe muttered a curse under his breath. Darkness and the weight of stone and earth above lay heavily upon him. Once in a while, diluted light filtered in from a high-set grill, or a breath of cold air caressed his cheek. Not often, but enough to hold back the sweating terror, the racing of his heart, the imagined screams of wounded men and tortured metal, and the dull roar of flames in the deeps.
    He’d thought he’d left this all behind with his soldiering days.
    To distract himself, Rafe said, “We’ll not be able to leave Blackstone through these tunnels. The exits are few and heavily guarded.”
    “I know of a safe place within the city.”
    They must be under some factory now, ironworks, perhaps, or the great composting facilities, for the air was hotter, full of moisture and the reek of a hundred noxious things. Bars of light—orange, red, yellow—fell like blows from high grilled windows and the steady drone of machinery and the pounding of hammers filled his ears. He saw the woman clearly for the first time, painted in lurid colors, eyes dark as wells, a twist of mockery on her lips. “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you behind.”
    “If you can get past the machines, that is.” Rafe answered her with a mirthless smile of his own. “Because they’re coming behind us, and from that tunnel to the right.” He jerked his head to indicate the direction.
    Her eyes narrowed, her look sharpened to a razor-slash. “You can hear them?”
    Like a nail file down my nerves.
Rafe nodded, teeth clenched against the vibrations that scored his bones and sawed at his ears. The machines were communicating with their Primary in that indecipherable language that only he could hear.
    This peculiarity of his had made him a great asset in the last war against Blackstone. On the front lines, of course.
    “Then we have an advantage.” The woman took a leftward-leading tunnel, and Rafe followed her, fighting down the throbbing ache that accompanied the buzzing. From the quality of the vibrations, they were military machines, fast-moving, maneuverable, probably with nozzles for throwing fire or disseminating gas.
    He hurried over to the woman, to tap her shoulder. She slid out of his way before his fingers could connect. “Yes?”
    Rafe dropped his hand. “They’re going to herd us into a closed-in area, away from the factories and ventilation shafts. A place they can seal us into. They won’t even need to catch us—they could just use gas. Sleeping or poison, it won’t matter.”
    “It will to me,” she said, with a touch of humor. “I can’t escape being dead. What do you suggest, then?”
    “We go where they least expect us to. The Protectorate.”
    “They will be guarding that.”
    “They always do. But Blackstone conscripts workers