He pulled off the rag he kept wrapped around his throat, folded it a few times, and set it on the floor of the tunnel just under the stone. If it already had fractures in it, falling on that wouldn’t shatter it. If the gem cutters shattered it later, it was hardly his problem.

Setting his chisel as delicately as he could, he began flaking bits of rock from the face around the sparkly. A tap, a pause to check his progress, another tap, another pause. It was serious, intense work. One slip of the chisel, and so much for the extra bread, and there would be a beating to boot. The others, the sons, could tell from the changed rhythm that he had found something good.

“Mags! That’d better not be a green one!” shouted Jarrik Pieters down the tunnel.

“Ain’t!” he grunted. “Yaller.”

“Don’t break it!” Jarrik shouted back unnecessarily. He could just see Jarrik yelling from his own seam, round face red with exertion and almost-anger, bushy brows furrowing, brown hair (already going thin on top) stringy with sweat, and little, deep-set eyes sparkling greedily at the thought of another sparkly in the pouch. And big mouth gaped wide to yell at Mags not to break it. As if he would! What did Jarrik think he was, an idiot?

Yah, that’s exactly what he thinks you are. Or worse. Much worse. An idiot and Bad Blood.

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.