He made a sharp gesture at Wyatt, who reached behind him to grab the handle of the motorized cart that held numerous travel trunks. Activating the miniaturized steam engine with a push of a button, Wyatt gave the cart a firm tug to get it moving. Terilyn watched him steer it after Samuel and followed them at a sedate pace toward the row of barracks farther down the dusty street.
The quarry master fell into step beside her, eyes on Samuel. “Thevezirdespises that one.”
Terilyn hummed softly. “Samuel has his uses.”
So did thevezir, though Joelle always liked to think she was the one using them. Eimarille had reached out to Joelle some years ago because the House of Kimathi was one of the easier noble bloodlines subverted for their cause.
Whatever sort of alliance Joelle thought she’d made with Eimarille, it wasn’t truthful. Terilyn knew Eimarille offered conditional support because destabilizing the Houses would keep Solaria busy while they took back Ashion. ThevasilyetJoelle governed would eventually, with time, come under Daijal rule—as would the rest of Solaria and the entirety of the continent.
The Twilight Star had decreed it, after all.
Eimarille was to be queen in this Age of Progress as it turned into a new Age, and Terilyn would stand by her side always.
Until then, Terilyn would do her queen’s bidding. If that meant ensuring each of the death-defying machines remained functioning, then she would cross borders to do so.
It wasn’t often Terilyn left Eimarille’s side. When she had to, they gave excuses that the Star Order required Terilyn’s presence for further training. The lie about a brief sabbatical allowed for Terilyn to travel where Eimarille couldn’t, acting as her queen’s voice. She’d visited every country on the continent, stood in the poison fields, killed those who needed removing, and enslaved others that were useful.
Her last excursion had taken her to Matriskav, her birth country’s capital. Unlike that icy city, Thornton was a tiny frontier town in the Southern Plains of Solaria, southwest of Bellingham, and walled off from the grasslands by metal fencing. It was as far removed from the cold of the north as one could possibly be.
Outside the town’s wall was the Thornton Quarry, a venture started fifty years ago before going idle two decades after its inception. The recent resurgence of work in the area had little to do with mining and everything to do with why they’d all flown south on false papers.
Terilyn waited outside the barracks while Wyatt unloaded some of the travel trunks. Samuel threw a fit about the quality of his accommodation—namely, the lack of it—but the quarry master was unmoved. Terilyn ignored the byplay, more interested in the townspeople curiously watching the display of bad manners. She was ever on guard against potential threats, and while she was dressed as a Solarian, one could never be too careful.
Once Wyatt finished, the quarry master flagged down several workers to load the remaining trunks onto a truck. In the process, one clearly marked fragile was nearly dropped, and Samuel almost had an apoplexy.
“Watch it!” Wyatt called out frantically.
Terilyn stayed out of the way while the workers grappled with the trunk and got it lashed down. The quarry master barked out orders to his people while Samuel merely got in the way. When he was unceremoniously shoved back for the third time, nearly falling on his ass in a most unbecoming way, Terilyn closed the distance between them.
She stood in front of him, staring into his reddened and sweaty face, having slipped one hand into her robe’s pocket to access the knife strapped to her thigh. “You are not in charge. Remember that, Mr. Fletcher.”
He went, if possible, even more purple, but the anger writ clear across his face was never given voice to. His gaze flicked down to her hand, hidden in the folds of the robe, and the red faded to a sickly white. Memory served him well enough in that moment, and he held his tongue.
Samuel swallowed hard before rallying himself in the face of Terilyn’s pointed dismissal. He stepped past her, shoulders curved in a vaguely defensive way. “Let them handle the trunks, Wyatt. We’ll be taking the motor carriage to the quarry.”
The motor carriage in question had been outfitted with rugged tires that raised the frame of the vehicle higher than those driven in a city. The quarry master got behind the wheel of the truck, revving the engine. Terilyn chose to join him in that vehicle rather than the one Samuel picked.
The small convoy left the safety of the walled-off town and drove down a bumpy gravel road to the edge of the quarry several miles away. There were two ways down into the quarry: a lift for personnel purposes, and the winding road used to move machines and stone. The pit wasn’t their destination, but rather, the fenced-off processing factory and the warehouses built beside it, hiding a specialized laboratory.
Terilyn climbed out of the truck, shielding her eyes against the sun with one hand as she took in the area. Workers swarmed the truck to empty it of cargo. Everything was set on several motorized carts, of which Wyatt took charge of without needing to be told.
“Hurry up,” Samuel called out as he headed toward the open bay door of the factory. Workers armed with pistols and shotguns stood guard at the entrance, nodding at the quarry master in greeting as their group approached.
The quarry master gestured at Terilyn. “The contract holder’s representative is here with a personnel and equipment delivery. You remember the inventor. He and his assistant are to be granted full access to the quarry and laboratory while here.”
The guards merely nodded but said nothing, allowing everyone to enter with the motorized carts. Terilyn blinked rapidly to adjust her eyesight to the shaded interior.
Gas lamps burned from the ceiling, the illumination kinder on her eyes than the winter sunlight. The entirety of the factory floor had once been used to process stone. Now, those machines were all gone. In their place was an enormous machine that reminded Terilyn of a spider sitting in a web with all the piping and coils that twisted everywhere. Clarion crystals glowing in shades that ranged from carnelian to a yellow gold powered pistons that pumped within the depths of the machine.
The center bulk of the machine was a chamber made out of brass hexagonal plates, shaped into a large dome with a set of doors on opposite sides. Clear tubes connected to that center portion, pumping green-tinged gas into the chamber.
One set of chamber doors was easily accessible by laboratory workers. The other set of doors opened up into a walled-off pen that Terilyn couldn’t see into. Workers paced around the pen in the catwalks above, the shotguns in their hands pointed at whatever was kept imprisoned below.
Around them, packed into cages, were dozens and dozens of debt slaves.
“I see the banking laws have helped to keep you well-stocked,” Terilyn mused.
A woman turned away from the machine’s controls. “Well enough, though I’ll never say no to a shipment of product.”
