Quartz Read online

  QUARTZ

  The Sunless World Book One

  Rabia Gale

  * * *

  A sunless world. The lost Tower of Light. And the race to find it.

  Rafe Grenfeld, diplomat and spy, has problems.

  He’s just learned of the discovery of a legendary quartz pillar: his world’s most precious resource. But his informer died before revealing its location, and Rafe’s on the run in the hostile state of Blackstone.

  Once, quartz powered magical devices, but the mages who created them are long gone. Now, veins of quartz give light to a dying world, and Rafe has competition.

  Karzov, the notorious chief of Blackstone’s secret police, is also hunting for the pillar. Determined to claim it for his own country, Rafe forms an uneasy alliance with the mysterious and maddening Isabella. As dangerous magical artifacts resurface and dark forces close in, Rafe must tap into the lost powers of the mages to find and secure the quartz—before his world is torn apart by famine and war.

  Quartz is a fantasy novel.

  Published by Rabia Gale

  Cover art and design by Yocla Designs

  Copyright © 2015, by Rabia Gale. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This e-book is licensed for your enjoyment only. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  * * *

  Flux

  Acknowledgments

  Books by Rabia Gale

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Blackstone

  RAFAEL GRENFELD BURROWED DEEPER into his nest of potato peelings and rotted cabbage leaves. The piercing wind-shriek of the stazis’ whistles had been silent for eight long gongs. His trousers were thoroughly soaked with old tea, soup, and other things he didn’t dare think about, and his sense of smell had shut down out of sheer self-defense.

  It’s all gone wrong. So much for all the negotiating and debating that had preceded the diplomatic mission to Blackstone. Even Lord Aynworth’s instructions for Rafe to be tactful—or at least just quiet—had been for nothing. The secret police had arrested Oakhaven’s embassy to a man, diplomatic immunity notwithstanding. Rafe had only escaped arrest because he’d broken curfew and gone out to retrieve a battered badge from behind a loose brick in Liberty Block. By the time he returned from his unsanctioned expedition, the embassy was surrounded.

  Now Rafe was the only one who had even a hope of making the meeting with the Blackstone resistance.

  Rafe shifted, trying to ease his cramped muscles. The compost dumpster shuddered, and he froze. It was a flimsy thing, a box made of thin sheets of steel, already deformed and rusting. Luckily, dumpsters in Blackstone were not emptied every day. Unluckily, they were bound to attract rats.

  Solemn bronze notes shattered the silence, signaling the start of second shift. Blackstonians did not even get the last day of the year as a holiday. Poor bastards.

  Nonetheless, this was Rafe’s chance to move, unless he wanted to inhale the fumes of fermenting tea and sour soup for an entire workshift. Rafe moved the dumpster lid aside, inch by inch, and unfolded himself. The dumpster groaned as he clambered out, its sounds masked as doors banged, men called, and the overseers’ whistles blew.

  Rafe eased out into the alleyway. Gas hissed as it flowed into the street-lamps. The steady click-click of the lighters preceded the dim blossoming of blue flames. Their dull flickering painted everything in pallor and shadow.

  The dumpster lay between two of the workers’ compounds. The windows overlooking it were small and dark—Blackstone was much more frugal with light than Oakhaven. Clotheslines sagged at head-height. Mouthing an apology to the hapless owner, Rafe took a tunic and a pair of drawstring trousers, the shapeless faded garments of a Blackstone drone.

  Except they didn’t call them drones here. Blackstone workers were citizens, comrades, brothers. Rafe stripped off his own well-tailored garments—dark trousers, brown jacket, and the once-white shirt—and donned his disguise.

  He held the badge on his palm for a moment. It was shaped like a clenched fist and had taken Oakhaven two years and one death to acquire. Perhaps today it would prove its worth. Rafe tucked the badge into a pocket and pitched his Oakhaven clothes into the dumpster.

  Rafe slipped out of the alley and hurried towards the sounds of muttering voices and shuffling feet. A crowd pooled in the brick-paved meeting square, growing ever larger as streams of men flowed in from the gated, concrete compounds. Selene, low in the sky, was a dirty white smudge peeking out from behind a squat building. Rafe clenched his hands to keep from making a good-luck gesture at his world’s only luminary. That was an Oakhaven affectation.

  A chief overseer, holding the long staff of his office, bellowed instructions from a speaking box placed beneath a picture of the Father. The paint was pocked and bubbled, as if the Father of the People had broken out in boils.

  “Sections Six and Seven to the pottery in Liberty Block!”

  Rafe muscled into the crowd. He would be more suspicious if he lurked on the fringes. The stench of sweat and oil emanating from his companions was a relief. His stint in the compost dumpster had actually helped his disguise.

  “Sections Eight and Nine to the foundry in Fraternity Square. Section Ten on unloading duty at the docks.”

  The docks. Unattended boats and bridges beckoned, enticing him with escape. Rafe was a fair swimmer. He might even make it across the river.

  No. There was no way he could return to Oakhaven, to Uncle Leo, without the information the Blackstone dissidents were so desperate to share.

  Rafe put his head down and joined Sections Eight and Nine.

  The note he’d received from the resistance had simply said “In the old theater, three gongs into second shift, day before Greater Girdlesday”. The old theater lay in a rundown district not far off the route to Fraternity Square.

  The men of Sections Eight and Nine formed a loose knot as they followed their overseer, a short bandy-legged man with a baton stuck through his belt, through the narrow streets. The gas lamps were turned low and spaced widely, with long stretches of shadow between them. Rafe stumbled over a loose stone, and muttered a curse. One or two men gave him incurious looks, the rest yawned or stared at their feet as they trudged along.

  Rafe wished he had grabbed a cap. Every time they passed through a splash of light, Rafe was conscious that he, of average height in Oakhaven, was taller than the compact Blackstonians. His hair was brown and
longer than their dark, cropped heads. He hunched his shoulders and made himself small.

  Stazi whistles in the distance sheared through the night air, followed by yells and a scream that set Rafe’s heart pounding. Sweat prickled the back of his neck.

  The men stopped, muttering. The overseer peered over his shoulder and grinned fiercely. “Section Ten at the docks was a trap. Hopin’ to lure one of them flamin’ royal ass-kissers out into the open. Looks like they found their man.”

  A cheer went up. Rafe joined in with a wordless cry that might have meant anything.

  Had another member of the Oakhaven party escaped the arrest at the embassy? Hope bloomed and withered in an instant. If yes, the stazi had just caught him and Rafe could do nothing about it.

  He had to keep that appointment at the old theater.

  One of his companions peered at him, glance sharp as a knife. “Hey, you. You the new fella from Three?” His voice was too loud in the chill dead air.

  The gazes of the surrounding men focused on him, no longer sleepy, but suspicious and alert.

  Rafe was caught in the middle. There was nowhere to run.

  “About time you noticed, citizens,” he snapped. “You’ve performed poorly, very poorly, all of you.” He straightened, using his height to command their attention, and glared as if they were sloppy new recruits. “What if I had been an enemy? I could’ve used you as cover, slipped into the foundry, sabotaged our work, carried our secrets to those dancing dandies in Oakhaven. Then what, eh? The Protector relies on your zeal to keep us safe and you have proven unworthy.”

  The men cringed. The overseer strode up to Rafe. “What’s goin’ on here? I was told nothing of this. Who are you?”

  Rafe turned a look on him the intensity of a Shimmer megalamp. “Do not question the Secret Fist.” He raised his clenched hand, opened his fingers. Light caught the curves of the metal badge.

  The terror was palpable. The men nearest him swayed back, though their feet seemed to have fused to the pitted street. The overseer paled.

  Time to make a graceful exit. Rafe bestowed a thin-lipped smile on the man. “However. Tardy as it might’ve been, you did notice that something was amiss. My report shall not be entirely negative. A few weeks of half rations and a dozen gongs of drill shall suffice. For all of you.” He glared at their stricken faces. A whiff of urine wafted to his already-besieged nose.

  Impressive. The Secret Fist really were as bad as the reports indicated. Rafe could almost admire their fear-inducing qualities—in this instance it was very helpful—if he weren’t so set against their very existence. “Carry on, then,” he commanded. “To the foundry. And mind you do not speak of this to your comrades in other sections. Their time of testing will come.”

  The overseer managed a garbled, “Yes, Citizen-Commander-Comrade!” and bowed and backed his way out to the front of his group. He squeaked out orders and the men formed themselves into a tight terrified square. They marched away at a military pace dangerously close to a run.

  Rafe waited until they disappeared from sight and melted into the darkness in a way he hoped a real member of the Fist would’ve done.

  Rafe pressed against the crumbling brick of one of the buildings that surrounded the old Royal Theater. Most of these buildings were abandoned, their windows boarded up and blind, their backs turned on this fallen symbol of hated noble privilege. That the Royal Theater still stood was a testament to its sturdy design and good workmanship. Its gilt and silver had long been stripped and its statuary defaced. Pale gashes in the smoke-blackened façade showed where marble had been carved out and removed.

  The front of the theater, he noted, was dimly lit by the only working gas lamp in the square. Why would that be on, with no one living here and few to pass this way?

  Rafe’s gaze swept beyond the theater and over the other buildings, probing. Some of the windows were unshuttered. He scanned them, and was rewarded with a flicker of movement in one.

  Rafe slid along the walls until he found the entrance to the occupied building. Had the dissidents posted a guard?

  Or was this another trap?

  Rafe slid out of his scuffed boots and soft-stepped up concrete stairs in his stockinged feet. There’d been movement here, and recently. There was a disturbed quality to the air, the suggestion of sweat, the faint trace of food.

  Boots trudged overhead. Rafe paused, listening. The tread spoke of a weary boredom. Whoever it was had been doing this a while. Rafe counted steps coming and going, then waited for the scuffle of the guard turning around. He inched up the last few steps and peeked out at the landing.

  A hallway ran the length of the building, and the guard who paced it looked glazed, as if he’d been subjected to a history lecture by Rafe’s old tutor. Faint light came through the doorway of the one room that had been opened.

  It was no great feat to slip into the room behind the guard’s back, to walk up to the two stazi crouched sill-level at the window, and tap the leader—identified by the rank bars on his uniform—on the shoulder.

  “Your guard,” he said conversationally, as the men spun and fixed him with the barrels of their guns, “needs a shift in the stocks, a whipping, and demotion to mine work. A child could’ve gotten past him.”

  He turned down the collar of the coat he’d pilfered on his way to the theater, and briefly showed the fist-shaped badge pinned there. Their eyes widened, showing glistening whites. Behind Rafe, the guard entered the room, his footsteps quick and his breathing harsh. The stazi captain, stocky and balding, shook his head and made a cutting gesture, and his men lowered their weapons.

  Rafe ignored them all and knelt at the window. The theater’s portico was the most brightly-lit area of the whole square.

  “Anyone go in?” he asked, quiet but authoritative, a tone of voice he’d picked up as an officer in the Oakhaven army.

  “Just the traitors, sir,” said the stazi captain. “The two we know.”

  Furin and Berlioz had been discovered, then. Or betrayed.

  “Good. Lay low till I give the word. I’m going in to see what I can get out of them”—he let his tones modulate back to those of an Oakhaven gentleman—“complaining about the lack of light, and my poor dark vision, and the soot and what it’s done to my coat.” Rafe fastidiously dusted his coat as the stazi laughed in a nervous way that told him they didn’t think he was very funny. “Think I’ll make a good Oakie?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Rafe pointed a finger at the captain. “You. Your name?”

  “Er… Gorvich, sir.” The man was all but bowing.

  “Don’t move. Sit tight. Do not bungle this operation.” He let his gaze linger on the young guard lurking in the doorway. “Go back to your posts.”

  He left on silent feet, feeling them trying hard not to watch him go. He kept his posture confident, all the while wondering just how he was going to warn the dissidents, get their information, and get them all out of the jaws of this trap.

  There was trash in the portico.

  Rafe sidestepped it, and reached out a hand. His fingers brushed against cool marble, glided over its surface, found rusty hinges, splintered wood and a gap. He went inside, boots crunching over rubble. The light from outside did not illuminate the darkness so much as reveal its different textures, the shadows amidst more shadows.

  Rafe felt his way along the wall, stumbling over debris. He went past one doorway, a skeletal staircase like the rib-cage of a sea monster, two nooks, and then into the theater itself. He paused, scarcely breathing. Velvet darkness blindfolded him. His ears buzzed with heightened alertness.

  He listened.

  A startle of movement, a catch of breath. A shushing sound, a smack of flesh meeting flesh.

  The snick of a weapon.

  Rafe’s mouth was dry; he hadn’t had anything to drink for most of a day. He licked his lips, pursed them, whistled. A jaunty tune, turned to a ghost in this dark of ages gone by.

  “Who’s there?” The voice
was hard-edged.

  “The one you were to meet. The man from across the mountains.” Rafe strained, but could make out nothing besides two indistinct forms. “We must leave. The stazi are watching this place.”

  A second voice, shrill with fear, “Ah! I’ve heard the whistles! The tramping, searching, poking—”

  “Quiet, Morvis.” The first voice, like a block of granite, quashed the other’s rising hysteria.

  Morvis. That was a new name. Rafe spoke to the first voice, the in-charge one. “Who are you? Furin or Berlioz?”

  “Furin was taken.” Berlioz’s voice was bleak. “And it seems so will we be.”

  Morvis let out a sob.

  Rafe shook his head, though the others couldn’t see. “There are back ways out of this place—I explored them just yesterday. I’ve bought us some time. They won’t follow me in for a while. We can lose them among the buildings—surely you have safehouses?”

  A sound, half-gasp, half-laugh, from Morvis. “You? How can you help us? You’re a fugitive! They’re looking for you. You both. They’ll find you… and me, if I go with you. Why should I go? Why did Furin bring me into this?” His voice grew loud. Rafe lunged and grabbed Morvis’ arm. Fingers clawed at his face. Rafe fended them off and twisted. The man cried out and Rafe shook him. “Quiet! You’ll bring the stazi down on our heads!”

  “This filthy darkness!” sobbed Morvis. “We can’t see a thing! We need light!”

  “I have a lantern.” Berlioz fumbled with something.

  Rafe released Morvis, but stayed close. A small orange light bloomed and Rafe saw Morvis’ sweat-sheened face, wide-eyed, double-chinned, soft and pudgy. The rest of the man did not inspire confidence: paunchy with doughy hands that fluttered uselessly. Berlioz was older and grayer, like weathered rock. He held the lantern low, the light mostly shuttered, shielded with his body.