One of the heating coils in the ceiling of the giant cave that was the Jackson Depot Emporium was dead – a hard, black snake the thickness of my torso. The rest of them glowed orange, on the verge of yellow, to compensate. The place was toasting and smelled of vanilla.

  “Where do you get the energy?” I asked.

  “Magma generator,” Tomlin said. “Runs most of the mines.”

  “Baylen bring it?”

  Hao snorted. “Da Baylen couldn’t figure out a magma generator if it climbed up the drill shaft and bit him in the nuggets,” she said. “No, it was the council that brung it, before my time.”

  “Council?” I said. For a four-person village, the Jackson Depot political structure was byzantine.

  “The Council of Families,” Ma Tomlin said, emerging from behind the drapery that hid the kitchen from the main cave, her hands still white with flour. “They’re the real power in Jackson.”

  The smell of vanilla got stronger. Whatever Ma Tomlin was baking would be a treat.

  “So why don’t you kick the Baylens out, then?” I said. “Nobody seems to like them.”

  Ma Tomlin spat air. Kid Tomlin followed suit. That cute little habit of theirs was becoming old, fast.

  “Because Da Baylen has got his mage,” Ma Tomlin said. “Get rid of the mage, and he’s got nothing.”

  “Got guns,” I said, thinking of Baylen’s ridiculously large pistol.

  “Everyone’s got guns,” Ma Tomlin said. “Doesn’t help.”

  “Just shoot the mage,” I suggested. “Mages die like other men.”

  “We did,” the kid said. “Middle Vincentes shot him in the head. The bullet jes’ flattened, and then Maurice broiled him alive.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Interesting. The dirt mage was a warder. Not often you see that combination. Mages tend to throw forces around with their minds. They don’t have the patience or coordination to ward. Or the skill.

  “I heard he missed,” Hao said. “Little Cousin Vi-Luong said the ricochet sparked from the wall.”

  “No,” said Tomlin, “it got squashed by the mage.”

  They started to argue about who said what, and who had or hadn’t been there. Neither of them had seen Maurice fry the kid, apparently, but both were convinced they were right. I noticed that when he was riled up, Tomlin had no trouble talking to the woman of his dreams.

  “Can I ask you for a bottle?” I said, turning to Ma Tomlin.

  She bent and produced a brown bottle from beneath the bar, tall as my arm and covered in frozen condensation. The Jackson families sure liked their drink. She put an opener to the top, but I stopped her with a finger on her hand. Her skin was dry and rough, a working woman’s skin.

  “A very particular bottle,” I said, “the one Baylen drank from. Unless you’ve already washed it.”

  She gave me a lopsided smile, and bent beneath the bar again, emerging with an empty bottle wrapped in paper.

  “Not touched,” she said. “You can still see the fat from his lips.”

  Which was a myth, that mages needed fat or blood to work a hex. Any sort of body remnants worked, as long as it had complete DNA in it. Of course, the amount of DNA was directly proportional to the amount of force you could push through it and the distance you could push it, without burning out the link, or yourself. I've seen a demonstration at the Academy where one of our professors illuminated a faint line from a bullfrog to its clone half a meter away. Of course, adult bullfrogs weigh over a kilo and the professor had an inscribed and warded spell circle to help him. Two if you counted the cage the live bullfrog was in.

  Which was the reason I hadn’t tried to search for biomaterials inside the Bucket. The force you could push through a few strands of hair or flakes of skin was laughable. It wouldn’t even register on an empowered dowsing rod. But it didn’t seem that Ma Tomlin knew that.

  “Thanks,” I said, putting the bottle in my pocket, where it stuck out like a miniature assault cannon. “Any chance you have something of Maurice’s?”

  Ma Tomlin shook her head.

  “That’s a sneaky one,” she said. “Never leaves anything behind. Brings his own glass.”

  “Smart,” I said, even though it wasn't. But the dirt mage bought into the myths. Either he had no formal training, which wasn’t unheard of, or he was crudmucking smart, and fostered a persona that played into the myths the locals believed.

  Ma Tomlin spat air to one side, showing her opinion of Maurice-the-dirt-mage, or Baylen, or everyone.

  “Any chance I could get a room?” I said.

  Without a word, Ma Tomlin dug in the pocket of her dress and slid a key card across the stone of the bar.

  “On the house,” she said.

  I was about to grab the key, when the atmosphere in the room changed again.