Cameron

Crafter Olivia Polden was young.

That surprised Cameron, as he made his way through the crowd of people pressed in front of the stone benches of Parliament to where Olivia Polden's group was assembling.

She wasn't just physically young, Cameron was used to seeing that in the rejects he had monitored before now. Getting old as a Reject was about as common as a train arriving on time during a festival. But the way she laughed, her easy smile, spoke of a certain lightheartedness that seemed almost inappropriate for someone who could level buildings and turn people into smoke.

Crafter Polden's file indicated that she had no official role in the City. She didn't work on the tasks that normally fell to Crafters, such as working on the distribution networks for the fires of the Spire. She didn't make anything, nor was she involved much in research. Her formal role, such as it was, seemed to be improving the resources allocated to the City's various orphanages.

A patron of orphans. Admittedly, the clout her red coat provided could do those children a world of good.

The Crafter noticed him as he approached, and gave him an appraising glance. "I take it you're my shadow," Olivia Polden said.

Cameron nodded, and held out his hand. "Cameron Aster, of the Bureau of Oversight. I've been assigned as your evaluator during this operation."

"Olivia Polden, but I guess you already know that," Crafter Polden said, as she shook his hand. The movement shifted her glasses down her nose, and she carefully pushed them back up. "Anything I should know about having a shadow?"

Cameron blinked, surprised by her question. It took him a moment to understand what the Crafter had asked, and why. "Right, you've never been paired with an evaluator before. Let's see, generally I try to stay as unobtrusive as possible while you go about your business."

"My Golem toppling business," Crafter Polden interjected.

"Right. Normally we try to stay out of the way, get a sense of your mental well-being, and do our best to let you carry on with your life," Cameron explained.

"That's a very bland way of saying you stand behind me with a knife, ready to put it in my back the moment I make you nervous," the Crafter said, and her pleasant disposition vanished like a snuffed out candle.

Cameron sputtered, and held out his hands. "No, I-"

"Relax, would you?" Olivia said, with a laugh and a smile that no longer looked so young and innocent. She clapped him on the shoulder, and turned away. "I'll live longer if you mellow out a little more."

As she turned away to greet someone, Cameron couldn't help but wonder what she would make of Mackaroy. The grizzled shadow and thus impetuous Crafter would probably come to blows within minutes.

Cameron's thoughts were derailed, suddenly, when she saw Mackaroy step up to Crafter Polden, hold out his arms and smile. "Well well, look at Olly Polly in her grownup red coat!"

"Mackie!" Crafter Polden exclaimed, throwing out her own arms and embracing the grizzled shadow. She hugged him fiercely, pulled him back, and frowned at him. "You know you look like one of those crime fighting inspectors from a street play."

Mackaroy laughed. "I'm more of a firefighter. Heard you were driving Civil Development berserk with your work on that orphanage in Withering Evergreen."

"I wouldn't know. For some reason, people don't like to complain to me."

"Might have to do with being able to light them on fire. But I take it you've met Cam?"

Crafter Polden frowned. "I have."

Mackaroy nodded, and held up his hands. "Try to get along, Olly. You're his first Crafter."

"Okay okay," Crafter Polden said with a wave of her hand. "Did they assign you to Garland? I'll feel a lot better if they did. Hardly anyone has ever seen what master is really capable of."

"Afraid not. I'm assigned to Breckan Howel," Mackaroy said, and he turned away to look at the young man busy staring up at one of the tapestries. "Is that your apprentice? Hearthsward, Victor, or Vance, or something beginning with a 'V'."

"Vincent," the young man said, turning around and joining them. He stepped up to Mackaroy and extended his hand. "Vincent Hearthsward."

Mackaroy ignored the offered hand, instead turning to Cameron's charge. "Olly, why is your apprentice here? I'm pretty sure he's not allowed."

"He's coming with me," Crafter Polden said. "His education isn't stopping just because an invasion is on."

The Crafter and the shadow stared each other down for a long, tense moment. It ended only when Mackaroy blinked, and nodded. "As long as he doesn't fight the Golem. If you'd trust him with a task like that, you'd have gotten him the coat already."

Crafter Polden nodded. "I'm okay with that, Mack."

"Master," Vincent said carefully. "If my presence is a problem, I ought to stay behind. You shouldn't have any more distractions."

Vincent trailed off, and looked back at the tapestry. Cameron could see which the apprentice was staring at, the work at the end of the short row, the tapestry commemorating the Fourth.

The tapestry had a dozen smaller boxes, six along the top and six below, depicting the most dramatic battles of the last invasion. But the centrepiece, the most important single event of the invasion, was a group of a half-dozen Crafters, fire in their hands, fighting a towering monster made of stone. Around the Crafters soldiers and civilians were fleeing, and the wall near the Golem was a ruin of rubble.

Six Crafters fought at the wall of the Rustfields district, fighting on after the Golem had scattered the guns of the army, and even after the wall had been leveled beneath its fists. The six Crafters fought, and their battle had brought the Golem down barely six steps from the wall.

The part that tended to be glossed over, except in Oversight, was the one Crafter who survived that battle. Taila Illyan, who left half of the Rustfields in ruins before she was brought down.

"You're taking Garland's words close to heart," Olivia said, pointing up at the Fourth Tapestry.

"Shouldn't I, master?" Vincent asked. "You said once that Crafter Kohl is essentially the Guild's war-master. His concerns have been shunted aside by the guildmasters and the Lord Captain. I think I ought to be troubled."

Cameron admitted, in the privacy of his own thoughts, that the apprentice might be the most sensible person in the room.

Apparently Mackaroy felt the same way. "Well kid, I'm not sure where you learned your caution from, but it wasn't from your apprenticeship. Olly could stand to lean some restraint from you. You can stay," he said approvingly.

"Crafter Polden," Cameron interjected. "Shouldn't be we mustering with Crafter Howel?"

Cameron pointed into the crowd, where a small group of soldiers had grouped around the proud figure of Crafter Howel. Two of them were carrying a heavy and ornately decorated luggage chest, and the others were already pointing to Crafters in the crowd.

"Peacock," Mackaroy mumbled irritably. "But good call, kid. Let's get going. We wouldn't want to make Howel late for his hour of glory."

"He might Howel in indignation?" Cameron asked.

Mackaroy cringed and Vincent coughed, but the real surprise was Crafter Polden, who burst into laughter and doubled over so violently her glasses fell off her face and onto the floor.

Cameron rubber his head, somewhat embarrassed. "The joke really wasn't that good, madam Crafter."

"I disagree," Crafter Polden said, as she snatched her glasses off the floor. "You've never heard the man give a lecture about the need to maintain the Guild's prestige. Howel in indignation, I love it."

*****

"Put that down carefully, you flame-baked fool!" A wiry woman in a rust-red called out, as she snapped her fingers at a pair of soldiers at the end of the train car.

Cameron darted ahead of the others and climbed up into the train car, alarmed. But when he made it into the car, all he could see was a woman in the rust red coat of a Crafter directing a pair of soldiers with her luggage.

The soldiers cringed and scowled, but didn't look back at the Crafter. Cameron watched impassively as they lowered the heavy chest as carefully as they could until it settled onto the back of the car.

"Good. Now that you've managed to not blow yourselves up, you can leave," the Crafter said. "There's barely enough room in here for the six of us and our entourage."

The soldiers bit back whatever retorts they might have uttered, and stepped away rather gingerly.

"Saval," Crafter Howel asked, raising an eyebrow and glancing pointedly at the chest. "Is there really something explosive in there?"

"Of course," Crafter Cassiopea Saval replied, seemingly enjoying sharing that fact. "That way, if a nosy Crafter like yourself tries to peek inside, they won't read anything before it blows up in their faces."

"Isn't that dangerous?" Crafter Howel asked.

"Not to a Crafter," Crafter Saval replied. She then snapped her fingers, and scampered over to the chest. Cameron was somewhat surprised by how quickly the emaciated woman moved.

Mackaroy, sitting across from him on the train, had a hand in his coat, and his seemingly relaxed stance was hiding his tensed arms, and his planted feet.

Cameron stood up, and strode closer to Mackaroy, leaning forward so he wouldn't be overheard. "Boss, who is she?"

"Cassiopeia Saval, lead scientist at the Bureau of Research and Development," Mackariy replied in a conversational tone. With a frown and a sharply pointer finger, he instructed Cameron to return to his seat. "Among her lengthy list of accomplishments, the inventor of Coldstone."

"Coldstone?" Cameron asked, and his hand instinctively shifted to the knife under his coat.

"Yes, the knife in your pocket," Saval said, pointing to Mackaroy, but not to Cameron. "Is made with steel laid over a small core of coldstone. Your knives, and the newest issued swords of an officer, now come with coldstone cores so that it's much more difficult to impersonate someone of authority. Also, for you shadows, those knives drink heat, which is very distracting for a crafter when you stab one with it."

"They're still reevaluating our training regimen to take advantage of these weapons," Mackaroy admitted, relaxing a little. "But they've saved lives, madam Crafter. My own included."

Mackaroy tapped the burn on the side of his head with his finger.

"Oh good. Because making knives was exactly what I intended it for," Crafter Saval scathed, as she searched through the chest. "Coldstone caps have revolutionized the distribution network, allowing us to pipe the fires of the Spire further and hotter, doubling the speed of the reclamation projects allowing us to grow enough food to actually have three full meals a day, and all you can think of is making pointy metal sticks."

Mackaroy pulled a thin knife out of his boot, and began to look at the blade carefully.

Cameron grinned, and said, "he's edgy, and likes to make a point."

Crafter Polden groaned and put her head in her hands.