Another day, another hard pull. Mazelton finally managed to read for a bit while the wagon was in motion, and the victory warmed him the entire afternoon. It was a little pocket history of the Second Swabian Empire. The author clearly despised the Second Swabian, with words like “failed,” “dismal,” “incompetent,” and “impotent,” featuring prominently. He got a good laugh out of “The case brought by Minister Volutenni against Pelksy for the crime of Cuckoldry was dismissed, as the Minister’s concubine testified that the Minister was so sexually inadiquate that they were not, in a practical sense, in any form of sexual relationship.”

It was a happy distraction from his aching hands and aching core. He had overdone it. No two ways about it- he had. The hands were a common enough thing- the tendons twanging up and down his forearms like over tightened wires, with sudden jolts of electricity arcing through them and pricking the flesh along the way. Willow Bark tea should cure that, vile tasting as it was. His core was a slightly bigger problem.

An overdrawn core was a common problem that rarely occurred. Common, in that a person’s core could only hold so much heat and it was easy to use up that heat while polishing. It rarely occurred, at least to Mazelton, because the ambient heat in cities tended to be high enough that refilling his core was as easy as a short meditation. If he had to process a lot of cores quickly, he usually drew on core dust- cheap, universally available, and the heat was easily absorbed.

But now people were getting scared to go prospecting, and the core usage on the trail was modest. They weren’t filling up the heat sponges fast enough. He could grind down some of the lousier cores that they had traded for, but that would cut into their profits. He could probably talk Policlitus into it, but he knew that, if the alternative was “recover slowly for free in my own time” was the alternative, he would have a tough sell.

He closed his eyes as the wagon jolted along, not really cycling the heat in him but just… feeling it. Getting a sense of where his body was, and what it needed. It was tapped, unsurprisingly. His hands were practically devoid of heat, having pushed all of it through his tools. His feet still had some remnants, as did a few other places. He could feel his lungs doing their work, drawing in air as the invisible particles of heat hitched a ride in with every breath. He could more or less trace an outline of his lungs in heat. Painfully faint, now. A long, long time to refill the core.

Mazelton slowed his breaths, focusing on breathing deeply. Letting the heat cycle gently through him. Usually he wouldn’t care to try that on a moving wagon, but there was so little heat at play that it was safe enough. The little invisible tubes and threads that ran though his body formed a tight net around his lungs. Oxygen went into his blood, he was told, but he could see the heat leaving his lungs and going into the little tubes. Around and up into his core.

Around and around the little gusts of heat went; tiny, flickering little things carried along invisible veins and ultimately lending their warmth to his core. Same as it always was, but somehow more tangible, more visible for the lack of background heat in his body. It felt… intimate. Like he could be newly intimate with a part of himself that he thought he knew perfectly. It was a lovely disorientation.

He pulled out of his meditation as the Duane turned the wagon into the campsite. His core wasn’t fully recharged. Wasn’t even at a quarter full. But it was better.

The clan taught that a sufficiently advanced polisher, with a sufficiently advanced legacy, and phenomenal quantities of both heat and the ability to control the heat, could turn their core into a sort of sun. Dense enough to subtly attract the heat in the body, but hot enough to fuel endless changes for the polisher. The black sun. If someone in the Old Radler branch had managed it, they kept it very quiet. Maybe his grandparent’s generation.

Mazelton had always thought it was a myth. Even for a polisher, a core that big and that much heat- fatal, without question. Now though, he was less sure. Something had shifted inside his mind. Pulling heat into his core no longer required conscious attention. He did it like breathing. It only got awkward if he paid too much attention to it.

Long way to go until the black sun shone. Another distant goal. One step at a time, all the way home.

And on that wistful, philosophical note, Mazelton came face to face with several hundred of the Two Souled, all of whom were clamoring for cores. At discount prices.

Polyclitus offered Mazelton a big dash of his prized hot sauce by way of apology and thanks. Mazelton accepted it with silent grace and a murderous heart. Then he tried hard to let the resentment flow away with his sweat.

The next morning, the caravan left without Mazelton.