Chapter 3
1275 Words
“Tyler? Ty! Don’t zone out on me, Inspector Varsen!” Raymond called out exasperatedly.
Tyler smiled lightly. He liked Raymond, which was far more than he could say for most people in the Tower.
The boy was as spoiled as the others, but he had potential. He was curious about things and had a penchant for asking very good questions.
But Tyler was not here to make friends.
He was here to win assets.
And if that failed, access.
For Tyler, Raymond was both.
“It’s a foggy day,” Tyler commented flatly.
Raymond immediately calmed down. That was the other reason he liked the younger man. He didn’t need to pretend too much around him.
He wasn’t soft with the boy, yet there was no office gossip about Tyler’s stricter, confident side.
“You doing okay?” Raymond asked carefully.
At the office, only the two of them knew that Tyler sometimes fell sick when the fog came. Not always. There was never any indication of which occurrence would cause an episode.
In one incident, before Raymond finally believed the fog was an issue, Tyler had slumped, falling to his knees in their office.
The supervisor had rushed to the wall-to-ceiling windows, glanced down, and seen the evidence that Tyler was not pretending.
There had been no fog earlier that day; it had come suddenly, as it usually did, and Tyler, who had been stuck at this desk since morning, had simply slid off his chair.
“Yeah, I’m inside. It was clear on my way in. Guess a new vein opened or something cracked –”
“Or someone’s doing something without a permit,” Raymond cut in.
That’s my boy, Tyler mused, his smile widening.
Rogue mining by low-class, poor, and impoverished peoples; mine infiltrations by gem thieves; and unsanctioned mining by landowners were common occurrences in Salvena, and the wider Ashrone.
In their country, gems were life.
Licensed miners also did the wrong thing, occasionally, but such acts were few and far between; otherwise, they could lose their mining rights, or even the land they owned.
These and more were why mine inspectors were key members of the Ashrone workforce. No mine work was done without proper inspection of the location, tools, and qualifications of those carrying out the actual job.
The government had its Ministry of Inspections. The wealthiest mining companies had private inspectors.
Tyler Varsen was one such in-house inspector.
He and everyone in his department and field kept mining companies and investment houses honest. They gave reports to owners and carried out investigations and random checks on mining operations.
When things were not done right, not only fogs, but also tunnel collapses, sinkholes, and environmental devastation could occur. Not to mention the loss of lives for locals and workers, and loss of time and money for owners.
“Brighton, tell me,” Raymond continued smoothly.
“A section caved in. The materials used to hold the ceiling were all up to standard. It looks like intentional tampering, but with something far away,” Tyler rattled off, switching from casual to work mode.
“A caster?” Raymond asked suspiciously; the supervisor, supervising.
“Must be. The tech showed no readings, so it has to be magic-based,” Tyler replied, slowing down his speech as his mind worked.
“Could it be some of the locals?” Raymond remarked, copying his subordinate’s steady pattern.
“Most likely. I couldn’t go into the town, Miss Belarnt recalled me,” Tyler replied evenly.
There was a weighty silence on the other end.
“Raymond?” Tyler called evenly.
“Yeah, I’m here. Sorry,” Raymond replied distractedly.
“What happened? Did she…” Tyler lowered his voice, “Find out?”
Silence.
Tyler waited, moving to the window again after reconfirming that the office door was locked.
“She almost did, but mostly it was ‘cos you went with the old jet,” Raymond replied, part guiltily, part irritably.
Now it was Tyler’s turn to be quiet.
Raymond was saying two things at once. Tyler waited to see which line his boss would follow.
“You sure you won't go to HR? I mean…,” Raymond’s voice drifted off.
Guess it’s the second one, huh, Tyler mused, stifling a snort.
Tyler’s supervisor had seen Ashley Belarnt’s handling of Tyler only once, and since then, the younger man made it a point to let Tyler leave the office as often as he wanted.
While Raymond impressed girlfriends and attended private auctions outside Salvena, using company funds on company time, Tyler Esteil, the faceless Master of the Miran Auction house, the largest, most prosperous black-market gem hall in the entire nation of Ashrone, created items for clients or inspected their wares.
The two basically kept out of each other’s way. But when it came to the job, they were a perfect team.
Tyler smiled again. He aspirated into the phone.
Raymond picked up his cue to go on and on about limitations, boundaries, and equality.
Tyler let him run, pulling out three gems he was crafting. Personal work.
If Raymond had been in the office, Tyler would have found some reason to take off and would have done his task elsewhere.
“Malorcent,” Tyler murmured at the first.
“Junster,” he mumbled at the second.
“Azayine,” he whispered at the third.
Each gem was about an inch in diameter. Rough. Like stones picked off the ground. These were not refined items. They were straight from the mines.
And they had not been logged in any register, as should be done under any legal mining process. Given that they had been ‘found,’ there was really no need.
Tyler had unearthed them all in abandoned mines.
In Ashrone, ‘abandoned’ meant the owner was done with the site. It was empty. If anyone found something that the owners had not. It would not be considered a crime.
After all, everyone knew that no profitable mine would ever be abandoned.
On the other side of things, if anyone got injured, lost, or died while scavenging an abandoned mine, the owners were not liable.
A fair law.
A just law.
Ashrone’s law.
Something most people did not know was that Tyler Varsen – Tyler Esteil – was a miner. One of the three most desired and enviable skills in the land. A skill that could raise the lowest citizen to the height of society – if recognized and validated by the noble houses.
But, as a servant, under his mother’s watchful care, he had been made to hide his gift. All his gifts. And he had complied. Until he had gotten out of the Kramer Estate and made his way to university, where he was finally alone.
No Kramers, no mother, nobody, monitoring his activities.
As he had no license, all his mining was illegal, but not prosecutable under Ashrone law since he only mined abandoned areas.
However, what Tyler did – either version of him – was nothing so simple as walking into a mine and picking up pieces of cast-off rock.
Not Tyler, son of Maid Linda Esteil. Not ‘mud-face,’ as he had been called by the Kramer heir and his boisterous friends.
What he did was dangerous.
Very dangerous.
The mines he foraged were all near collapse. In his ranging beneath the earth or into the belly of mountains, he had crawled, climbed, pulled, pushed, crushed rocks, cut tree roots, using his body as his number one tool.
More than once, from his youth to date, he had been buried alive.
- Writer
