The Gambler's Fortune by Juliet E. McKenna

Author:Juliet E. McKenna [McKenna, Juliet E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General
ISBN: 9780380819027
Amazon: 0380819023
Publisher: Eos
Published: 2000-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Othilsoke,

3rd of For-Summer

“Keis!” Jeirran’s hail was blown away unheeded as he picked his way over tussocks of coarse grass. He left the track worn between the meager, wind-stunted bushes crouching among the rocks and entered a narrow gorge cutting in the broad sweep of the valley side. The breeze was baffled but the noise of metal on rock rang loud in the confined space. Jeirran stood and watched. Teiriol raised a pick high over his head, and then plunged it into the rocky soil with an explosive shout, ripping it back. He was at the uppermost narrow of the defile, digging waist deep below an outcrop of stark gray rock. A second man was shoveling the rubble with its blue-green streaks into a stream channeled on one side. A third raked and stirred, peering through water clouded with sand and soil. At his nod, another man shoveled stone into a long wooden trough where Keisyl was wet to his elbows, sorting through rocky fragments washed a second time in water brought down in a series of wooden pipes. All were dirty, sweating and grim-faced with concentration.

“Keisyl!” Jeirran picked his way uphill over the cording of rock and mud that marked the annual progression of the digging up the little cutting.

“What do you want?” Keisyl’s displeasure was uncompromising. He dumped a handful of tinstone in a sack and knuckled the small of his back. Swinging a dripping shovelful around to the pile of debris behind him, he splashed Jeirran’s polished boots.

“I brought some baking from my wife.” Jeirran opened the lid of his basket, unfolding the layers of cloth within, thick wool surrounding snowy linen.

“Food,” Keisyl bellowed, hands cupped around his mouth.

“Shut off the leat!” An answering wave beyond a rise in the ground was followed by the rattle of a sluice and the stream slowed to a trickle barely deep enough to dampen Teiriol’s mud-caked boots.

“It’s Theilyn should be ferrying the food. You should be working here,” Keisyl growled. “That would be one less share in the season leaving the soke.”

“It was your mother made the deal to bring in her kin,” Jeirran said curtly. He beckoned to the hastening diggers with a smile.

“If we hadn’t wasted so much time on your idiotic schemes, she’d have had no call to do so.” Keisyl bit crossly into a pasty.

Jeirran peered critically up the pitted and ravaged hillside. “This cut is just about worked out. You and Teir between you would have cleared it by the last half of summer. The stupid crone has given away half the paltry pickings.”

“She wanted this working finished before we started a deep mine,” hissed Keisyl. “The shaft paid for with the riches you were going to bring back from Selerima?”

“The old busybody had no business making any deal for labor.” Jeirran was intent on his own grievance. “That should have been Eirys’ decision.”

“Eirys wasn’t here, was she?” Keisyl’s sarcasm was unmuted by his mouthful. “You insisted on dragging her all that way and she hasn’t even got a belly on her to show for it.

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