Kindan watched until the caravans were lost to sight and only the dust marked their passage.
“Well,” Danil said softly, “that’s that.” Natalon clapped him on the shoulder. “It is.” Danil turned to him and said solemnly, “Miner Natalon, I want to thank you for the magnificent way you provided for the wedding of my daughter.”
Natalon nodded, equally full of the formality of the moment. “Danil, it was my pleasure.” He paused a moment, then added, “And now, we’ve got coal to mine.”
Chapter III
As the days turned into months, it seemed to Kindan that nothing much had changed. He still had chores to do. He still had to attend classes with the Harper. He still was bullied by Kaylek. His turns on watch or as runner for the camp were the same as always.
But in truth things had changed. He was now the first up in the morning and was always sure to have klah and breakfast ready for his family. His father asked him to check in on Dask in the mornings, and that was new, too.
In class with the Harper, Kindan started to notice that he saw less of Zenor in class and more of Dalor. In times past, it had always seemed that Dalor was either a very sickly child or that he was being overworked by his father. Either way, he used to miss at least two classes every sevenday, sometimes more.
Now it seemed like Dalor was in classes every day but one each sevenday.
Perhaps that change was explained by the other change: Master Zist. If Kindan had thought that Master Zist was a hard taskmaster when it came to singing, it was nothing compared to how hard he was when it came to teaching. No one could ever do anything well enough for the Master.
“Look at that! Do you call those letters?” Zist growled at little Sula one day. “How are you going to write a new recipe and share it with anyone, hmm?”
Sula had wilted under the interrogation. Everyone knew that she was hoping to join her mother, Milla, as a baker.
Another day, the Master reduced Kaylek to a red-faced gibbering wreck just by a series of probing questions on multiplication. “And how, young Kaylek, are you going to calculate the load a mine’s supports must bear if you can’t even figure out the area of the ceiling?”
Dalor got off no easier because he was the head miner’s son. All the same, Kindan noticed that whenever the Master had been hard on Dalor before the lunch break, he would take special care to soothe Dalor’s nervousness in the afternoon.
Kindan was the most obvious exception to Master Zist’s hard teachings. When Cristov and Kaylek began to notice it, Kindan started to wish that the Harper would treat him as roughly as the rest of the camp’s children.
“What is it with you?” Cristov sneered at him one day at break time. “Is it just because you can sing so well?”
“Can’t be for much else,” Kaylek decided.
But Kindan knew exactly why Master Zist never bore down too harshly on him. Early on, not long after Silstra’s wedding, Master Zist and he had had another contest of wills similar to the heated exchange they’d had on the day they’d met. As before, neither had truly won the argument, but Kindan had recognized something in Master Zist’s stubborn insistence that his students try their hardest and not be afraid to ask for help—and Kindan had decided to accept the challenge.
It had been difficult at first, but soon Kindan found himself relishing his time with the surly Master. He discovered that, by exercising a level of diplomacy that he had never attained before, he could survive the Harper’s harshness and give back as good as he got without ever being branded as “disrespectful.”
Kindan found, as he approached his eleventh birthday, that he could even work with Kaylek. His elder brother, plagued by Master Zist’s remonstrations about his class work, had actually turned to Kindan for help.
Kaylek was smart enough to realize that work in the mines was dangerous and required more wits than temper. So he had swallowed his pride—as best he could—and had learned from his littler brother.
The morning of Kaylek’s first day in the mines with his father and his brothers, Kindan was surprised to be awoken by a warm cup of klah thrust into his hands.
“I thought you might want to see us off,” Kaylek said shyly.
Recognizing Kaylek’s actions as a peace offering, Kindan quickly pulled himself out of bed. “Sure.”
It was the dark of night. Kaylek and the rest would be going down in the shift that ran from just after nightfall to just before dawn, rightly called the “watch-wher” shift because that was when watch-whers were awake.
Careful not to disturb Jakris and Tofir, Kindan pulled on his clothes and followed Kaylek into the kitchen.
“Dad said nothing about you,” Dakin said when he noticed Kindan.
“I’m just going to see you off,” Kindan answered.
Dakin shrugged. “All right,” he said. “You know Sis used to do that.”
“Where’s Dad?” Kaylek asked, looking around the room.
“In the shed with Dask, of course,” Jaran, the second eldest, replied matter-of-factly.
“Let’s go out and see if he needs any help,” Kaylek suggested to Kindan.
“Only if you want Dask to snap at you, you will,” Kenil said. Kaylek glanced at Jaran and Dakin for confirmation and saw that both older boys were nodding their heads.
“He’s been a bit proddy recently,” Dakin explained. He frowned. “I don’t like it, nor does Dad.”
“He’s been like that before, though,” Jaran said, apparently continuing a conversation that Kindan hadn’t heard the start of.
“Come on, lads, time’s a-wasting,” Danil’s voice called from outside.
They all put their mugs in the sink and started out the door, Kindan trailing.
He followed them all the way up to the mine entrance, where a group of miners waited. Kindan recognized one of the smaller ones.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I’m going down to help—my father said I could,” Zenor answered, his voice lull of pride. Talmaric, his father, nodded.
“It’s only for today,” Zenor added when he noticed Kindan’s concerned look. Kindan brightened immediately.
“Wish me luck,” Kaylek called to Kindan as he started into the mine.
“Good luck.”
“What are you talking about luck for?” Kenil asked. “Miners don’t need luck, they need caution.”
“Sorry,” Kaylek mumbled.
They swept from view, and Kindan went back to the cottage and his bed.
It started with a silence. The children noticed it and gathered around the windows. Master Zist noticed only that the children were not paying attention to him.
“Get back here, now!” he shouted. He had just gotten them settled for the first lesson of the morning. One child turned his head toward him but quickly turned back.
Zist growled and strode over to the window, ready to bodily return his students to their seats. The tension in their small bodies unhinged his plan. He followed their gaze—they were all looking at the northern mine shaft.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Dunno,” a girl replied, “something’s wrong.”
“How do you know?” Zist demanded.
One of the children shook his head and made a shushing motion. “Can’t you hear? It’s too quiet.”
The sky outside darkened. Master Zist looked up and saw a thin raft of dark powder drifting down toward the lake from the direction of the mine shaft. Not smoke—coal dust.
“My father’s down there!” one child wailed.
“And my brother!”
“Shh!” said an older child, cocking his head and listening very hard, his eyes never moving from the cloud exuding from the adit.