Isles of the Forsaken by Carolyn Ives Gilman Page A

were alongside it, peering up at the markings that identified its origins. “It’s one of Tiarch’s,” Harg said, meaning the squadron that had patrolled the north while the rest of the Native Navy fought in the war.
    He steered over toward the unfinished pier. A group of workmen was erecting a scaffolding to drive the next log piling into the sandy bottom. The labourers were all Adaina—short, brown-skinned, curly-haired. “It’s our own people at work there,” Harg said. “Look, there’s Bonn and Thole on the pier.”
    The people on the dock recognized them at the same moment, and one began to wave wildly. Harg brought the dinghy up beside the new dock and lowered the mainsail. Thole’s shouts had gathered a crowd, and many hands reached out to help tie up.
    “Jory! Harg!” Thole cried in a voice that had changed timbre since they had seen him last. The boy had wanted to go with them, Harg remembered, but they had told him he was too young.
    As they climbed out onto the dock they were surrounded, barraged with embraces, welcomes, and questions—where had they been, what had they seen, what had they done. Before long the amazing news of Harg’s rank came out, and he had to get out the box with his epaulette and cockade to show them, and try to list the names of the ships and battles they had been in. Jory looked on, a little tense and uneasy in the crowd.
    “Jory, will Agath ever be glad to see you safe and sound!” Thole said enthusiastically. “She’d given you up for lost, I think.”
    As the others turned their attention to Jory, Harg drew aside Gill, one of the older men in the group, and said in a low tone, “Listen, you’ll have to be careful with Jory. He took a shell in the head and hasn’t been right since. He’s a little dangerous, actually.” He knew he only had to say it once. Soon the news would be all over the island.
    “How are
you
, Harg?” Gill said carefully.
    “I’m here,” Harg said. “That’s all that counts.” He scanned the new buildings, the dock, the smoking hillside. “Ashwin above, what’s going on?”
    “You’ll never believe this,” said Gill. “They found a lead mine on the island.”
    Several people gathered round to fill in the story. Prospectors from the Inner Chain had arrived a month before, following tales of the Yoran lead that had once weighted the steadiest keels in the isles. Discounting all assurances that the lead was long mined out, the surveyors had set explosives in the rocks and bared a new vein that ran far out under the sea. Then, a week ago, the two ships had come, bringing machinery, tools, and Torna overseers to start construction on a smelting factory. The navy sloop was there to escort the mining boat and keep it safe from pirates.
    “That’s going to be the new smeltery,” Gill said, pointing at one of the buildings. “The dock is for the boats to bring the coal and take away the lead.”
    “Have you ever seen a lead smelter?” Harg asked, a little appalled. He had seen one in Rothur. Not a plant had lived in a three-hundred-yard radius around it, from the poison fumes.
    “We need the jobs,” Gill said. “You can’t imagine how bad trade has gotten. I know the pirates think they’re doing the right thing, but when they hit the Torna merchants, the prices just go up for the rest of us, till we can’t afford a lump of coal. We’re caught between the pirates and the profiteers.”
    “I heard about that,” Harg said, recalling his conversation with Admiral Talley. “I think it’s about to change.”
    “These are good jobs, too,” Thole said. “You won’t believe how much they’re paying us to work in the lead mine.”
    “Try me,” said Harg. Thole named a number; it was only a little more than a common seaman made in the navy, but Harg pretended to be impressed.
    “What about Yorabay?” he asked. “What’s been going on?”
    Everyone fell oddly silent, looking at each other to say something.
    “Not much,”