Chapter 711: What the Storm Uncovers

Chapter 711: What the Storm Uncovers

The camps along the storm’s edge were not all the same, and Leon spent the first hour learning to tell them apart.

The nearest belonged to a group in long dark blue coats who moved with military precision — scouts at the edges, a clear command tent, extraction tools laid out in exact rows. They had watched the Palace scouts appear along the ridge and had adjusted their perimeter by thirty paces without anyone appearing to give an order.

"Disciplined," Seraphine said. "Watch how they cover their collectors. They’ll be quick to respond if we approach."

The next was louder. A dozen people around a fire with no obvious command structure, several of them arguing, one of them waving what looked like a long flat blade at another. Their tents were patched. Their tools were scattered.

"That one keeps pointing at the blue coats," Ira said. "I don’t think they’re getting along."

Beyond them, a small group had set up a trestle table at the edge of their claim and was doing business. Leon watched two people from the blue-coat camp walk over to it, stand talking for a quarter of an hour, and walk back with a crate.

"Traders," said Vyra. "Or a group that decided it’s easier to sell what they’ve dug than defend it."

There were three more beyond those, too far off to read clearly. One flew a banner. One had a perimeter of what looked like stakes driven into the crust with something bound to them. One seemed to be doing nothing at all.

Leon could not see enough of the distant camps to judge their numbers. Even the nearest had people moving in and out of tents, making a reliable count difficult.

And not one of them is Harrowmark.

The storm moved while they watched. Leon turned his attention from the camps to the crust breaking beneath it.

It was not steady. It crept west for perhaps half an hour, barely moving, and then it lurched — a sudden forward surge of a hundred paces, the violet flickering in its heart going bright and continuous — and where it had surged, the crust came apart.

He saw it happen from the ridge. The gray crust did not crack. It lifted, peeled up off the ground in plates and sheets as the charged air at the storm’s edge passed over it, and the plates tumbled back into the storm and vanished. What was left behind was bare mineral bed, glittering and wet-looking and entirely exposed.

"The storm eats the crust," said Wen Shu, very quietly. "It strips it off and takes it."

"And leaves what was underneath," Leon said.

One of the field collectors — a young man called Lu Pei, whom Bai Heng had trained for two years — had his glass up and was scanning the nearest stripped bed. He barely lowered it when he spoke.

"There’s red," he said. "Fire — that dull red, like the terrace. And there’s blue-white along the far side, that’ll be ice-bearing. And something gray-green in between that I don’t — " He lowered the glass, frustrated. "Senior Brother, Bai Heng would know that in a second. I don’t. I can tell you it’s worth taking. I can’t tell you what it is."

"That’s enough for now," Leon told him.

"I’d need to cut a sample to be sure of anything."

"You’ll get the chance," Leon said. "Keep looking. Tell me if you see a clear approach."

Leon looked at the stripped ground with the specific attention of a man who had watched a thimble of spring residue feed his circulation two days ago. Red and blue-white: Fire and Ice, both of them his. He wanted samples of the gray-green material too, although he would wait for an examination before deciding what it was worth.

The camps occupied the exposed beds east of the storm, extending their gathering lines west as it moved away. Stakes and guards marked the richer patches. Farther north, a raised shelf of unbroken crust interrupted the line of workings. Nobody was cutting there yet.

Let’s see what’s under that.

Leon moved the Palace party along the ridge to a low rise east of the workings. The raised shelf lay roughly two kilometers to their northwest, beyond the northernmost marked claims. From here, they could reach it without crossing an occupied mineral bed.

"Nobody goes near the active front," he said. "Not the collectors, not the carriers, and not the scouts. When it strips ground, we let it settle before we walk on it. I’m not putting anybody into charged air to get to a rock first."

"The others are," said one of the carriers.

"They know more about this storm than we do," Leon said. "Or they’re gambling. Either way, we wait."

He spent the next two hours watching, increasingly aware of the time they would need to get back within plaque range. There would be no long excavation tonight. If they found something worthwhile, they could mark it, take samples, and decide how to work it after reporting to the spring.

The northern shelf resisted the first sweep of charged air. Plates peeled away on either side while its thick surface merely trembled.

On the next surge, a crack opened across it.

Lu Pei lowered his glass. "That section’s deeper than the rest."

Leon had seen it too. The moving wall curved around the stubborn shelf, leaving it protruding into the cleared ground. Then another violet flare ran through the storm. A slab the size of a house lifted, broke in two, and vanished into the churning air.

Color shone beneath it.

A broad mineral belt ran north along the shelf, its exposed portion dense with red and blue-white growth. Gray-green deposits filled the hollows between them. Farther in, violet veins appeared as the remaining fragments tore free.

Lu Pei brought his glass up so quickly he knocked it against his cheek.

"Careful," Loriel said, steadying his elbow.

"Look at how close the seams are," he said. "If they’re sound beneath the surface—"

"We take samples first," Leon reminded him, already studying the approach.

The storm continued west, leaving the belt’s eastern margin clear. No stakes stood there. The nearest rival collectors were still working the smaller beds to its south, although that would change as soon as someone looked up.

Leon felt a familiar eagerness. He had spent too much on cultivation to watch a field like this disappear into other people’s storage pouches.

Beside him, Lu Pei checked the padding inside his sample case, tugging each divider into place. His careful hands were steadier now that he had work to do.

"How many samples can you carry?" Leon asked.

"Enough to tell Master Bai what we found. More if the carriers help."

"They will. Start with the exposed seams. Don’t waste time digging for the deepest growth."

Lu Pei nodded and fastened the case across his chest.

"Wen Shu, check the approach. Lu Pei, bring the sample tools. We’re taking the eastern margin, behind the storm’s passage. Keep at least three hundred paces from the charged air. If it turns or spreads toward us, pull back."

"Two kilometers of open ground," Wen Shu said. "The camps will see us."

"Then we go now." Leon turned toward his household. "Seraphine, front. Ira, left flank. Vyra, keep the column together and the collectors covered. Loriel, with the collectors."

"Yes, Young Master," said Seraphine, and was already moving.

They came off the rise in good order and started northwest across the cleared plain toward the belt, and for about two minutes nobody else on the field seemed to notice.

Then the blue-coat camp noticed.

Leon saw their perimeter shift — a clean, disciplined contraction, and then a group of perhaps twenty breaking off from it and moving toward the exposed shelf, fast, in formation.

A moment later the loud group noticed too, and did not move in formation at all. They simply came, in a scattered straggling rush across the crust, the man with the long flat blade out in front.

Beyond the blue coats, figures were gathering beneath the distant banner. A third party broke away from that camp.

Leon kept pace with his collectors. He could reach the belt far ahead of them, but leaving the column exposed between three approaching groups would be a foolish way to claim it.

Seraphine glanced back, waiting for his instruction.

"Keep going," he said.

The blue coats accelerated. Leon watched their leading swordsman change course toward the same clear strip he had chosen.

They had both seen where to plant the first marker.