Foundation

Mags heard that a lot. And the other kiddies heard it said of him a lot. Not that any of them knew what it meant.

Most of the new kiddies were picked up to come live and work here once a year when Cole went out and about with his wagon, looking for orphans, kiddies abandoned, lost parents, and generally unwanted. He liked to get them around eleven years old, though he’d take them as young as nine if they were strong and looked like they could do the work. A few had come from as much as two weeks’ walk away, sent to meet Cole’s wagon by people who wanted ’em off their hands, and right quick.

Ah, but Mags was a different case altogether. Mags was local. And he’d been working for Cole for as long as he could remember.

And for as long as he could remember, every time a member of the Pieters felt like verbally abusing someone, Mags got The Lecture.

Yer Bad Blood, boy. Yer Bad Blood, and it’s damn lucky for you that yer here, an’ we can put ye to work an’ keep those idle hands busy, or ye’d be dancin’ at rope’s end already.

Bad Blood, because his parents were bandits and had been killed in a raid by the Royal Guard. Bad Blood, because he’d been found in a cradle in the bandit camp after. Bad Blood, so bad that no one had wanted to take him in and he’d been left at the local Temple of the Trine with priests who were probably not at all happy about being saddled with the care of an infant. But then along had come Cole Pieters.

Out of the kindness, the pure kindness of my heart, I tool ye. No one else wanted ye, not even the godly priests. They all knew what ye were. They all figgered one day ye’d turn on ’em. I am a bloody saint, I am, fer takin’ a chance with you.

And so the infant had begun life in the Pieters household with the imaginative name of “the Brat.” And from the moment his tiny hands could actually do anything, he’d been put to work, an unpaid, poorly fed, scantily clad, dirty little drudge. He was told, and he believed it, that he’d worked before he could walk, dragging a wad of rag- strips as he crawled, all unknowingly cleaning the floor with it. He’d been Brat for years, going from job to job in the household, from floor duster to spit turner, from pot washer to garden weeder until he was big enough to see over the side of the sluices. And that was when he’d gone to work at the mine.

And that was when he’d gotten the name of Mags.

Tap, pause. Tap, pause. He put his nose as close to the stone as he could and still see, examining the rock minutely.

He remembered that day. His only instruction had been to watch the older kiddies, do what they did, and look for things that sparkled and had color. He got the stuff that had already been picked over, no one really expected him to find anything. But as he had washed the gravel over and over again in his basin, watching not only the gravel in the pan but making sure he checked the stuff in the sluice as well, he had spotted something. It was no bigger than a grain of wheat, but it was bright, brilliant green. And then he found a yellow one, and a purple, and another green, a third green, and by the time the day was over, he turned over to his astonished overseer a little pile of tiny gem shards, a pile big enough to cover the palm of his hand.

“By the gods, Brat, ye’ve got th’ eyes of a Magpie!” Endal Pieters had exclaimed. And it was the same the next day, and the next, until they started calling him “little Magpie,” then Mags, and then—that was his name.

Carefully, Mags put thumb and forefinger to either side of the sparkly, and wiggled it, or tried to. Was it loose? Could he pull it out, like a baby tooth? That was always better than chipping it out.

He felt the thing give a little, heard the tiniest sound of grinding and—it popped out of its socket—in two pieces, not one, but they were both pretty big. He just wouldn’t say anything. Two sparklies meant a slice of bread,

“I ain’t hearing hammering!” Jarrik shouted. “I ain’t hearing hammering, Mags!”

“Pulled two!” he grunted back, took the time to get a drink from his bottle, and tucked the sparklies into the bag around his neck.

“That don’t mean no skylarkin’!” Jarrik shouted back. That was his favorite word for shirking lately.

“Gotta pee!” Mags retorted—which he didn’t, but his calves and thighs were beginning to cramp something fierce, and he could hear the donkey cart coming. He’d have to clear the tunnel, or at least stop working and cram himself in the end while the kiddie cleaned out the rock, so Jarrik shouted back his grudging permission and Mags backed himself down the tunnel he was working and into the larger shaft. The kiddie—named Felan, skinny, dirt- covered, lank-haired, and wearing patched up burlap breeks and shirt—didn’t even look at him, just plunged into the workings with his burlap bag. But Mags didn’t expect him to talk; he remembered when he’d been the donkey-boy and had been backhanded for talking to the miners.

Ye ain’t here t’ talk! Yer here t’ work!

Mags stretched his legs as he walked to the played-out seam they were using as the latrine. True waste rock went in here, burying the leavings before they started to smell too bad. The donkey-boy was in charge of that, too.

Mags didn’t know the kiddie all that well. So far as he was aware, the boy hadn’t spoken a word since he’d arrived. Well, that should make him poplar with Jarrik, whose every other sentence was “Too much skylarkin’!” or “Too much jibber-abber!” accompanied with the back of the hand.

Truth to tell, he didn’t really want to know the kiddie’s story. There were no good stories here. Every kiddie here was—wanted, burdens on their villages, bastards left on doorsteps, kiddies left orphaned—they arrived, more often than not with tear-streaked faces, and most of the time, their faces remained tear-streaked. There was little enough to be happy about here, after all.

The food was just enough to keep you alive and no more unless you somehow found or snatched some. They all slept together in a single cellar room without a fireplace, a room right under the barn and filled with hay and straw too old for the farm animals to eat. At least it wasn’t drafty, and being underground it kept from going below freezing and wasn’t too hot in the summer. They each got one threadbare blanket, so the best way to sleep was all bundled together in a ball like a wad of puppies, sharing body heat and coverings. Of course, that meant there were a lot of gropings among the older kiddies, but they all knew better than to futter. Everyone knew the story of Missa, who’d futtered and got a big belly. She got beaten and dosed until she lost the baby, and she was never right in the head after. And all the boys old enough to have been the daddy got a beating apiece. So nobody futtered.

Mags couldn’t figure out where Missa’d got the energy or the interest to do it anyway. He was always so bone-tired at the end of the day that he fell asleep as soon as he got warm, and there was nothing about anybody’s skinny body that made him want to put off sleep for even an instant. Maybe it