Blackwater

Lying prone under a short bush atop a steep hill, Zal looks through their spyglass at the road below. Two sentinels ride by on brown spiky-headed drakes.

“Two little senties on snakebite road, one falls off and breaks his bones, snake comes along and has himself a taste, one little sentie’s now deceased. One little sentie riding along, ‘til old Reverie sings her song, Razha Koronova springs from the trees, wounded little sentie’s begging on his knees,” Zal says.

“Did you just gender my gun?” Razha says.

“A little.” They collapse their spyglass with their palm and return it to its home inside their jacket. “There’s two of ‘em and they went off toward Korben.”

“It’s the regular patrol,” Razha says. “They ride back and forth between the posts in Halrin and Vice, since there ain’t a post in Korben. They’ll go up to Halrin and it’ll take an hour for them to get back, more than time enough for us to slip in.”

Razha stands up, leaning on one hand against a birch tree and looking down on the road. The breeze catches her long black coat and her grey scarf and the long braid of black hair sticking out from under the black bandana tied over head head, with a cute floral pattern in white. The little vials of colored powder lining the bandolier across her chest catch a glint of sunlight.

She looks down at Zal, “You disagree?”

“No, no, sorry. I was just thinking you look way more badass than such a gentle mountain flower has any right to. Plan’s solid.”

Razha pats their head and smiles.

They climb down the hill through a grove of little Murei trees, an invasive species that’s spread all over the mountains. Zal has only their own Aran ancestors to thank for that one, even if it was an accident. They have that much in common with the trees, growing on the wrong continent by no will of their own, yet hated for it by other outsiders.

Finally after an hour of crawling through the woods they reach the road, a path of packed dirt and loose stone slithering through the valley. According to Razha it’s called Snakebite Road for the abundance of the venomous creatures that make their homes around it, but she also said they never bite anyone unprovoked. Colonizers just can’t leave something alone.

They cling to the inside of each curve, keeping eyes and ears alert, until they come around the last curve and meet the main road. It runs alongside the Black River and the railroad for many Distance. They turn left and head upstream, where from over the next hillside a pillar of black smoke rises into the clear blue sky. The land turns uphill again ahead of them and follows the train tracks along the veins of Kogakuan industry.

The river used to be called something else, but nobody remembers. It’s obvious why it has its current name. Its sluggish waters carry the black sludge of an entire branch of mining and refinery operations. The Black River flows all the way to Lake Averis, slowly poisoning the water supply of most of the cities, but that isn’t enough to make flatlanders care what’s happening out here in Zintaia.

The grass along the shore is as black as the water. The only life thriving here is the blight-vines that strangle the remains of old locust trees with roots dyed black. A few still struggle against it, sprouting rows of green leaves near the ends of their mangled branches. Fight on, comrades.

Another unnatural wonder weaves its way through the tall tree trunks--the long drooping wires that carry electric power. The town ahead surely doesn’t benefit from this electricity, it must all go to power the refinery, maybe a small amount left over to carry the telegraph signal. A lot went into these power conduits, made from a highly conductive alloy. They required huge amounts of raw metals, abundant in western Sabaku, and minerals found in plants that grow in the sodium rich soils of the Janikan coast. So it’s very fortunate that both of those countries turned out to be ruled by violent terrorists and needed to be liberated by the valiant Kogaku Defense Forces, in exchange for a large share of their natural resources.

Now with no shortage of metal and other raw materials brought in by Kogaku’s efficient logistics networks, the last piece of the puzzle to bring electric power to the cities of Kogaku is discordium, extracted from the rich black veins conveniently running underneath the ancient Zintaian mountains. Volatile a substance as discordium is, it can only be transported a short distance from mining sites before needing to be processed into a more stable state--hard lessons about that were learned early on, and some of these valleys will never recover from it.

Crystal refining is a difficult and dangerous process requiring many busy hands working long hours, so having them live nearby made sense. So here it is, as they round the next curve, the refinery town. A hand painted sign under the great wooden arch stretching over the dirt road marks it:

            Bright Future Industries
            Welcomes You to
                 KORBEN
                pop. 525

It isn’t the first refinery town Zal has seen. They guess fewer than half of those five hundred twenty five were working men, between job fatalities and debilitating injuries. All who could work will be employed by the company until the day they die or can no longer work, and at such time they will be given a generous pension of nothing.

Just beyond the sign, a bridge of stone arches carries the railroad across the black waters. From there it passes through the center of town, an open courtyard paved in brick, with a few buildings surrounding. Zal guesses at identifying them: the bosses’ offices, the water distiller, a little schoolhouse, supply warehouses, and the company store, where surely all of Korben’s residents purchased their food rations.

A stone staircase climbs the mountainside from there, leading to a few rows of houses and ultimately to the top of the mountain, while the railroad continues around the mountain to the east and diverges. One track goes deeper upstream, connecting to an entire mining region, to more mines and more refineries, making Korben the choke point of a major part of the Empire’s power source.

The other branch of the track circles all the way around the mountain to reach the flat area just below the peak. There, looming over it all, is the discordium refinery, a massive complex of small brick buildings and towering metal spires linked by a web of metal chutes and power conduits, all crowned by the two tall brick chimneys reaching above it all, spewing black smoke into the blue sky. A tall wrought-iron fence topped with sharpened spikes surrounds the complex.

A little metal bridge, just wide enough for a wagon to cross, connects the north and south halves of the town over the river. On the south side is a small hill that meets the tall cliffs of Helbender Mountain. A crude shale stairway climbs up that hill, and dirt streets branch out from it, lined with shacks of old wood with roofs of tin sheets, densely packed together.

Some houses are collapsed and abandoned, others are half fallen but still have kitchen fires burning inside, and a few are even in good repair, the newer ones. When these stock housing units were built, they must have looked sturdy, clean, even painted in bright pastel colors, welcoming workers from all over the region to move in and take a job at the refinery. After ten years, the remains of their paint is peeled and chipped, the wood beneath rotten.

And at the top of the southwestern hill, nestled under the rocky cliff, sits a small circular building of white stone, a Thean temple. The wooden sign in front bears an engraved message:

        Goddess rewards our life’s labor
        Justice awaits in the next life

All Thean temples have signs like this, with messages pre-approved by the Kogaku Department of Faith. The sign stands by the entrance to the graveyard, which wraps around the temple, overlooking most of the town’s housing. The headstones are not weathered, and many graves still bear fresh soil. The temple garden and the graveyard seem like the only green space in the entire town. The rest is mostly bare soil and stone, tainted with the black tendrils of the blight.

The streets are empty. At this time of day, and most other hours of daylight, the workers would be hard at work. The children too young to work must be at the schoolhouse, memorizing the great patriotic history of Kogaku.

Past the rail bridge, the dirt road runs right along the river’s edge. Razha keeps far to the left of the road, making passing glances at the black water. Zal stays with her.

“Which way?” Zal says.

“It’s up on the other side.” She points toward the houses up on the north slope.

“I see, let’s go.” They walk toward the old metal bridge, and Razha follows close behind, as if she’s hiding behind them. Zal steps onto the bridge, and it shifts from their weight with a loud creak. Its support structure is coated in rust, with some of its bolts reduced to dust, and it sways from side to side with each step.

Zal looks back to Razha. She stares at the black depths below and grips the rails of the bridge so tight that remnants of the green paint peel off under her nails. They turn back and put their hand over hers. This snaps her out of her trance and she jerks her head toward them.

“Hey,” Zal says.

“Sorry! Sorry, I just...”

“Here.” They reach behind their neck and untie their bandana, then cover Razha’s eyes and tie it off in the back of her head. “Let’s go.” They take her hand and lead her across quickly.

Razha lets go when she steps onto the bricks of the other side. She pulls the bandana off and hands it back. “Thanks Zal. I, I don’t know why it hit me like that. I’ve crossed that plenty of times since we got here.”

“Probably because you’ve been keeping it all bottled up again, and you only let yourself look vulnerable around me,” Zal says.

“I...”

“Don’t worry! I got you.”

“Come on, this way.” She leads them up the stone staircase to one of its branching streets, and on through the row of company hovels to the last one.

She knocks on the door, knocking in a peculiar cadence. A minute later, it opens to an old man in tattered brown clothes standing and leaning on a cane. His long white hair is tied behind his head. All over his brown skin are scars of burns and cuts.

“How you doin’, Mikal?” Razha says.

“Well, if it ain’t the Black Death come to visit me again,” he says.

Razha steps inside. “You know, I think that's a better name for the stuff that rides in those trains, rather than the girl who tries to stop 'em, just what I think.”

“So what should I call you?” Mikal says.

“The Mountain Flower of Helbender!” Zal says.

“Will keep that in mind,” he says. “And come on in, my new and most ambiguous friend.”

Zal follows them in and shuts the door. The hovel’s interior is one squalid room, a floor of dirt, two beds half-stuffed with hay, and a cooking pot under a crude chimney, fire burning underneath. It has no windows, but wide cracks in the wall allow some airflow. The metal roof isn't in any better shape judging by the buckets of water positioned in key places around the room. But at least it’s a source of cleaner water.

“Oh, this is Zal! Zal, Mikal,” Razha says.

“Hello, fellow -al,” Zal says.

“A fine name if I’ve ever heard one.” Mikal limps over to the pot and checks the water. After carefully measuring a cup of rice, he pours it in. “Y’all must be hungry. You eating well these days wherever the Hel y’all live?”

“Well enough,” Zal says.

“Good to hear,” he says.

“Are you eating well, old man?” Razha says.

“Soil here's too blighted to even keep a garden nowadays. We're all getting by on rations from the company store. Well they call 'em rations, but we still pay for 'em of course. With company scrip. Nope, can't get much worse than this.”

“So how about the patrols,” Razha says. “Looking for terrorists yet?”

“It ain't about y'all, believe it or not,” he says. “The union's gaining traction. We’re doing good, Razha. Actually, the bosses requested sentinel patrols to put some fear in the workers. Company brutes ain't doing the trick no more.”

“Is it working?” Razha says.

Mikal looks away. “Wish I could say no. But I know these folks, when the time comes they’ll know what side they’re on. And that won’t be much longer!”

“You mean--” Zal says.

“Time feels right, yep, Korben is going on strike. With your help at least. You mentioned food? Starvation broke many a strike in my time,” Mikal says.

“Oh, we’ve got plans for that, my friend,” Razha says.

“That’s why I like y’all, you’re problem solvers,” Mikal says.

“What can you tell me about the company store?” Razha says.

“The company store, to Hel with it! All I need from the company store is a bullet in that scab bastard Einin’s head.”

“Einin, you say,” Razha says.

“That traitor--he snitched and leeched until the union was no more--now he's reaping the rewards!” he says, pounding his cane into the dirt floor and looking up at the ceiling.

Razha and Zal look to each other.

“Earns a nice cut on all the store’s profits, so he gouges us for everything we’ve got, which ain’t shit as you know. That traitor, if I wasn’t sick why I’d...” He looks back to Razha. “He always has some hired muscle in there--if he’s not in the front he’ll be in the back--always, just in case anyone gives him trouble, the coward. There ain’t too much up front. But I see the shipments come in, not often, and they bring a lot at once. There's quite a lot of food stashed away in the back room, enough to feed us a good long while. It’ll be locked of course, but you know, that iron padlock ain’t what it used to be.”

“Ain’t a lock that can’t be picked,” Zal says.