“A strip mine,” one of the Harvesters—Powell—replied.
“That’s a mine?” Florence tried to reconcile what was before her. “Aren’t mines in mountains? Tunnels?”
“They can be,” Powell whispered, trying hard not to wake their sleeping companions squashed into the bench together. “It depends on the mineral we’re mining for. If it occurs naturally in large pockets, we strip mine it. If it’s in veins, tunnels may be more effective. Some can only be found in mountains.”
The Harvester was quiet for a long moment.
“You lived far from home.”
“What?” Florence asked, startled. They’d barely spoken more than courtesies, yet he had somehow known that about her.
“There are no mountains in Ter.4, little crow.” The man gave a knowing smile. “Which leads me to believe you’ve spent some time in Ter.5.”
Florence pursed her lips.
“Well, wherever you come from, you’re far from home.” He looked out the window.
“I don’t know where home is.” She didn’t, not anymore. Florence longed for the flat she’d shared with Ari in Old Dortam. But it no longer fit them. Too much had changed. And, if the smaller flat in Ter.4.2 was any indication, Ari had no problem abandoning homes to move on when life demanded it.
“You’re young enough that home should be Holx.”
“It should be.”
“But people are rarely what they should be.” The man was older than her, perhaps nearing twenty-five. Older than Arianna, at least, and that meant old enough to know of the time before the Dragons. “Why do you head to Faroe?”
“I’m taking my friends.” Florence nodded at Nora and Derek, slumbering the hours away across from her.
“It’s your first time in Ter.1?”
Florence nodded. The man leaned back in his chair, his gaze still focused on the mine in the distance as they slowly plodded along past it. Even packed in close as they were, they swayed slightly, shoulders brushing and sides flush.
“The land has changed much, in my years.” Florence tried to decipher the somewhat somber note in the man’s voice. “The Guild Initiates and Journeymen your age know it only as it is…”
“What’s wrong with it?” Florence asked, still hearing the haze of regret that floated through the man’s words.
“How long will you be in Faroe?”
If Florence wasn’t so accustomed to Arianna, the questions answered with questions might have been grating. But there was a tranquil similarity in the obscured truths and hidden meanings. “I’m not sure.”
“Then it will be long enough for you to arrive at your own opinions on these matters.”
Florence heard the finality in the statement and rested her head on the glass of the window. The strip mine was now out of view, but she kept her eyes forward as the train swayed in determined progression to the home of the Harvesters. More and more mines dotted the surface of the land as they neared Faroe. Deeper and wider they ran, until the train traversed suspended bridge-ways that spanned a mine directly below them.
She stared over the ominous edge, keenly aware of the thin pieces of steel that separated the train from the seemingly infinite oblivion stretched deep into the earth below. Men and women worked on spiraling walkways on the outer edges of the mine, so far below her that they looked like flicks of dust floating in the mine’s smoky haze rather than actual people. So,sofar below that the explosions they set off were nothing more than flashes of light and dull reverberations.
It was as if the Harvesters had peeled back the surface of the earth to find its soul. And its soul was the very lifeblood of Loom: iron, minerals, oil, and coal.
Faroe was perched in the center of these seemingly endless mines, like an island among an empty sea. Its towering buildings and compact construction was unlike anything Florence had ever seen. Buildings made of concrete had spires of brick built atop them, foundations made from the carved stone left from long-ago mining. Like an impenetrable wall, it was all connected. One city, one guild, every peca of space used. She wondered if Arianna had ever been to Faroe, and if so, what the Rivet’s take on the architectural choices were.
The train ran into a station underneath the city. Powell, in his kindness, offered to escort them to the guild hall. Florence was thankful they accepted when he led them through a rat maze of tunnels and tiny elevators that served as the city’s only means of getting around.
“Faroe built up when it could no longer build out,” Powell explained. “The problem with situating itself at the world’s richest mineral deposits meant that most of the land needed to be committed to mining. The Rivets tried to make sense of it, but the Harvesters ended up doing what we do best.” He knocked on the rough, bare stone wall next to him. Pick marks still pocked its surface. “We tunneled our way through.”
Within the city proper, Florence felt an omnipresent weight. Rock and steel, brick and concrete hovered over her. It compressed Florence’s lungs, and she was suddenly reminded of the last time she’d felt such a sensation.
“The Underground,” Florence said boldly. It was a taboo subject in Ter.4, and, judging by the rise of Powell’s eyebrows, it was known as such in Ter.1 as well. “Did Harvesters help with that at all?”
Powell considered it a long moment, encouraging in that he didn’t immediately refuse the subject. “At the time the Underground was first being conceived, perhaps. We did grant them some of our explosives long ago, pre-Revolvers even, to help blast deeper after the ground was broken. But the limestone of Ter.4 is prone to pockets and holes, and the Ravens seemed impatient and determined to make the place their own. Moreso after the Dragons’ regulations on the guilds.”
