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-jabber!” 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 unwanted, burdens on their villages, bastards left on door-steps, 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.