Zilako

What the Taiga Gives

Zilako works cold ground. The taiga concedes nothing easily, with short summers, long frost, soil too thin and sour for real farming, and narrow evergreens that close back in wherever the cutting stops. What the country does give is rock, and rock is what Zilako takes. The whole of this modest town lies within walking distance of the workings: sorting floors, sheds, charcoal stacks, and houses built low and tight against the wind. Frost sets the calendar. Heavy hauling waits until the ground is hard enough to bear it, and the wet months go to repair, timbering, and preparing the faces that will be worked next.

The Reach of Torolok

There are not many hands here, and the same ones turn up on the sorting floor, at the forge and on the haul road, in a place settled by the third wave and never grown much past its own workings. Allegiance belongs to Torolok, the larger seat off in the boreal forest, and the ore goes where that allegiance sends it.