Heart of Dust by H. L. Moore

Author:H. L. Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: H. L. Moore

Chapter Eleven

Doran barely had time to think in the week that followed. Coordinating the crates of black powder to the mines consumed his every waking and most of his sleeping hours. More sinkholes opened up in the slums, swallowing sections of the streets. He received more anonymous notes from their friend on the inside, telling them when the Archon’s guards would be patrolling key districts and when carriages of food were being delivered to the palace in the dead of night, always a different route and always correct.

It didn’t take long for the price on Doran’s head to lift to 12,000 coins.

“I’m almost tempted to hand myself in and claim the bounty,” Doran joked. Lien didn’t find it funny; she snapped back that if he didn’t take things seriously then she’d turn him in, claim the bounty and take over the Black Lung Gang herself.

Despite his glibness, the mines haunted him. Whenever his head did manage to hit a thin soot-stained mattress, he dreamed about the endless reels of blueprints, the Labyrinth swallowing the soot slums, and the mines in flames and himself trapped in them, suffocating on superheated coal fumes and smog.

He woke for the second time in a night, forehead damp with sweat and the surge of flames fading from his vision. Doran shifted in the shitty little bed that creaked under his weight and scowled, turning over one way then back the other way. He closed his eyes and hoped the tension would go away on its own.

Between his fits of restlessness, he found himself longing for something he couldn’t identify. Not Grace. Not Rhian either, which surprised him. Definitely not Lien’s harsh, scrutinisingly sensible judgements, however much they often brought him to his senses – it certainly hadn’t been Doran who pulled himself out of his stupor after Rhian’s death.

He found himself thinking of Nathaniel’s workshop instead – the faint but heady smell of elderflower and pinewood, the strange plant in the corner of the room, the aftertaste of the jasmine tea on his tongue.

Doran frowned and rolled over in the bunk, flicking his lighter to life to illuminate the room. He reached over to the table beside him for the small package Nathaniel had slipped into his jacket and examined it.

He wasn’t in the habit of indulging in luxury items. Even when he and Rhian lived together in Citer District, not entirely comfortable but not struggling either, he found it hard to break his old habits. He would hoard every last coin, forever putting things away for special occasions, always feeling mildly guilty when he spent money on items that didn’t contribute to his survival or to continue the battle that Rhian began with the Miners’ Liberation Association.

The year’s end loomed around the corner. Those elusive days in the past of putting things away for indulgences were trickling away like sand through the thin neck of an hourglass.

Doran threw off the scratchy blanket covering him.

He’d seen Lien brew tea in the past so he knew how to do it, sort of, which was still better than waking her up and asking her to help him.

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