by Anthony Ryan
“‘Dead from pains to the belly,’” I read aloud, casting an eye over the entry for the most recent death. A hefty and brutish smuggler from the Cordwain coast had arrived at the advent of the month with ambitions to make himself the king of the Pit. A fellow of impolite manners and utter disregard for Covenant lore, he hadn’t endeared himself to Sihlda. Nor did his attempts at bullying the other inmates win any friends. His corpse had been found near the uppermost shaft with several large holes to the gut, the signature wounds that indicated multiple blows from the sharp end of a pickaxe. I recalled that Brewer’s bunk had been empty for much of the night before, something I felt it best not to relay to Sihlda.
“He surely died in pain, whatever the cause,” Sergeant Lebas said, fixing me with a meaningful glare. “Death by violence gets his lordship all agitated. We wouldn’t want that now, would we, Scribe?”
Lebas was the very same sergeant who had refused to sell me back to the chainsman four years previously, and I realised with a small jolt of surprise that I now stood about an inch taller than him. I couldn’t match his bulk, but the notion of actually being able to look down at him brought a small smile to my lips nonetheless.
“Of course we wouldn’t,” I said, turning my smile into one of obsequious agreement. I also took on a slight crouch as I peered closer at the draft entry. Men such as this disliked the notion of their inferiors outmatching them in any way. Transcribing all the information into the official ledger was the work of minutes rather than hours and, while I was assiduous in correcting the sergeant’s clumsy spelling, I was careful to make no changes to the numbers. Sihlda had been clear that any miscalculations were not my concern for surely, when it came to spending his lordship’s coin, the sergeant’s business was his own affair.
“Well and good,” Lebas said, nodding in satisfaction. “Here.” He tossed me an apple, an item that rarely found its way into the food sacks, quickly followed by one more. “One for you, one for the Ascendant.” He gave me another warning glare. “Make sure she gets it.”
“That I will.”
I consigned both apples to the sacks before making my way through the gate. The sight of such riches was bound to stir a hungry anger among the prisoners who occupied the upper reaches of the shaft. These were commonly referred to as the Shunned, those whose lack of devotion and uncivil manners made them unfit for Sihlda’s congregation or acceptance into the other groups that occupied the middle tiers. Their position of proximity to the gate enabled a short journey with their burdensome sacks but they also had the poorest seams to work. Digging the required amount of ore from the upper shafts required twice the labour than those below, meaning the rations of the Shunned were often cut for failing to make quota. Since my elevation to scribe status I had found walking past their staring, resentful faces a less than pleasant daily chore.
“So, Alwyn,” Sihlda said to me later as the congregants gathered for the evening meal, “what news from the outside?”
Evenings among the congregants consisted of a meal followed by two hours’ toil in the tunnel. I, like most of us, itched to spend more time on our avenue of escape but Sihlda insisted we conserve enough strength to maintain the flow of ore. The congregation was by far the most productive group in the Pit which, along with the scribing duties now undertaken by me, ensured Sir Eldurm’s good graces and better rations. The sacks I had carried down the slope had been evenly distributed among the other congregants, helping to sustain our collective efforts but also ensuring my comparatively favourable status didn’t engender any resentment.
“The Pretender’s still abroad,” I said, recalling what scraps of information I had been able to glean from the guard’s gossip and the correspondence littering Sir Eldurm’s desk. “Ranging the border between Cordwain and the Fjord Geld, so they say. He either has ten thousand men or barely three depending who you listen to. Rumour is the king is about to call another muster to deal with him for once and all.”
“Just like the last five musters,” Brewer grunted, face soured by remembrance of his own service under the banners. “He can have the throne, for all I care, and a pox on it.”
“War is never just,” Sihlda told him, “whatever the outcome.” She raised a questioning eyebrow at me. “Anything else of note?”
“The usual.” I shrugged. “Riots here and there. Folk are awful tired of paying taxes towards the war. And it’s not just the nobles they’re angry at. I heard tell of an Aspirant in Couravel getting pulled from his litter by a mob of churls. Supposedly they stripped him bare and pelted him with shit all the way back to the cathedral.”
“Heresy,” muttered Hedgeman. A relatively new arrival with only a year in the Pit, he had nevertheless earned Sihlda’s regard with the depth of his devotional zeal.
“‘The rich despise the poor for their wretchedness and condemn them for their envy,’” Sihlda recited in a mild tone, a passage from the Scroll of Martyr Callin. I noticed she rarely quoted from anything else these days. “‘Yet they never seem to comprehend that a rich man is just a poor man with better luck.’ Those who serve in the senior ranks of the Covenant grow richer and so the poor grow more envious. It seems to me that the remedy for the latter lies in the former, wouldn’t you say?”
I concealed a smirk at Hedgeman’s contrite lowering of his head. Zealous he was, and more practised in quoting Covenant lore than all of us save Sihlda, but true thought and agency were beyond him. If any soul was more suited to life as a congregant than Hedgeman, I never met them.
“And the king’s sister’s husband died,” I added. “Lord Alferd someone or other.”
“Died how?” Sihlda asked, her interest for some reason piqued by this nugget of news.
“Not in battle, that much I could gather. Some sickness so the guards said. Most seemed to think it the Vehlman’s pox, as his dead lordship liked his whores, though a few muttered about poison, but they always do when someone of importance dies all unexpected.”
“His name was Lord Alferd Keville,” Sihlda said, voice soft and gaze distant. She rarely succumbed to reveries of her life before the Pit, but when she did they were usually provoked by the death of a prior acquaintance. “And he was good man, in his way, deserving of a better fate.” She paused, her voice lowering to just a whisper that I doubted anyone other than Brewer and I could hear. “And a better bride.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Hand me the smallest chisel!” Toria’s voice sounded from the tunnel’s black depths, the irritated urgency of it given additional emphasis thanks to the echo.
A year ago, the escape tunnel we had worked on for so long had intersected with a number of broad chambers with peculiar effects on the passage of sound. The first would transform a high voice into a near perfect baritone while this one, the largest yet encountered, made the smallest whisper last for what seemed an age. At first, we had welcomed this discovery, for the hollows were ready-made passages through the rock. However, Carver, the former mason and overseer of this grand design, soon pointed out that, far from aiding our escape, these chambers endangered it. Our tunnelling had weakened the natural structures that created them, threatening the most feared of all events in the Pit: a cave-in.
Buttressing the various cracks and fissures we had created was the only solution, a tedious business due to the need to limit our requests for additional beams from the guards. Replacing old props was a constant task but a sudden increase in the supply of timber would surely have aroused suspicion. Lord Eldurm might be a dullard in many ways, but he remained a keen-eyed gaoler nonetheless.
The delay added months to our already extended schedule, although in truth Sihlda had never set a precise date for our escape. As ever, she seemed content in ministering to her congregation in her subterranean cathedral, maintaining a daily ritual of supplications interspersed with observance of yearly feast days in memory of the principal Martyrs. Although she had won my devotion, if not my soul, at our first meeting, the Ascendant’s placidity set my ever-s
uspicious mind to pondering. Could it be that this whole scheme might be some form of trick? A way to keep us quiescent and servile with the always unfulfilled promise of liberation while she filled our souls with Covenant dogma?
The suspicion dimmed when the buttressing was finally completed and we resumed digging, but the feeling that Sihlda had no real interest in escaping the Pit lingered. I knew this distrustful inclination grew from the task that had filled my mind in rare moments of idleness over the course of the last four years. Endless conjecture on betrayal will breed suspicion of all.
Erchel’s kin, I thought, the small knife I carried carving a perfect flourish into the buttress I crouched beside. As I had countless times before, I ran through every face glimpsed at Leffold Glade, every name heard, every mention Erchel had ever uttered to me about his folk. Uncle Drenk’s got the reins these days, he told me once. Had to kill Cousin Frell to get ’em. Some dispute about a whore’s dues that was most likely made up to excuse the fight. He’s an awful clever fellow, Uncle Drenk…
“Chisel!”
Toria’s foot jabbed my shoulder, breaking through the stream of calculation which I knew would probably have led nowhere in any case. After four long years, there were only so many answers I could divine, producing a great many more questions in the process.
“Any diamonds and I get equal share, remember,” I said, retrieving the required implement from the sack at my feet and leaning into the tunnel to place it in her hand.
“Fuck—” she grunted with the effort of shoving the chisel into an unseen crack in the rock “—off. It’s all mine. And all the gold and rubies too.”
Squabbling over unfound treasure had been a shared joke between us since taking our first turn in the tunnel, but lately I found it growing thin. Although escape may finally be within reach, talk of riches reminded me that beyond the confines of this mine we would be penniless. It made me wish the fabled map to Deckin’s treasure had some basis in fact. Sadly, although possessed of a boundless desire for the riches of others, Deckin had never been one to hoard his wealth.
“We’ll need it all,” I said, slipping into a more serious tone. “When we get out of here.”
“The Covenant will provide once we reach Callintor, at least for a time.” Toria paused and the tunnel filled with the sound of her hammer pounding the chisel. Time had made us both somewhat expert miners, but she possessed the keener eye for the best way to dislodge stubborn stone. Also, her slight dimensions made her capable of squirming into crevices denied the rest of us. “Mind out,” she said, and I stood aside as a hefty boulder rolled clear of the tunnel. Recently it had taken on an upward slant after Carver decided it was now safe to start angling for the surface.
“Callintor is a twelve-mile stretch from the river,” I reminded her. “That’s a lot of ground to cover on foot with mounted men on your trail.”
“To get clear of this place I’d run a hundred miles in half a day, never mind twelve. Besides—” she huffed a little as she struggled clear of the tunnel to sit at the entrance, tired but still lively enough to regard me with a smile of faux sincerity “—has not our Seraphile-graced Ascendant decreed the sanctuary city as our destination?” Her smile disappeared as she gave an apparently appalled gasp, speaking on in a whisper. “Would you,” she began, clutching her chest, “go against the Ascendant’s wishes, Alwyn?”
“Piss off,” I muttered, sinking down at her side to unstopper a small bottle. “Here.” I took a sip, savouring the burn of brandy on my tongue before handing her the bottle. “Drown your blasphemy.”
“It’ll take more than this.” She drank, gulping rather than sipping, a worryingly typical trait on the rare occasions when drink came within reach. I resisted the impulse to pull the bottle away. Life had been hard for both of us here, but she wore it worse.
Despite everything I had somehow grown taller and broader with the years while Toria retained much the same diminutive stature, albeit with more wiriness to her arms. Her size made her a target for the more foolhardy non-congregants, especially the newcomers who hadn’t yet learned the deadly consequences of transgressing the unwritten but stringent rules of the Pit. Only a few months before she had been dragged into a mineshaft by a recently arrived trio of footpads from Althiene. Her deft hand with the inch-long blade she carried had stabbed out an eye and lopped off a finger or two, keeping them at bay until Brewer and I came running to investigate the commotion. After a short interval there were two dead footpads from Althiene lying in the shaft and a third left alive as a warning, deprived of both eyes to emphasise the point. The other inmates left him to wander and wail until hunger added another corpse to the monthly toll. As usual, the guards were disinclined to ask questions.
“Good stuff,” she said, wiping her mouth. “Steal it from his lordship, did you?”
“There’s a maid works the kitchens who likes me.”
“Whore.” She grinned as she handed back the much-lightened bottle.
“She’s old enough to be my mother. Just likes the odd smile and a kind word or two, is all.”
“Offer her more and perhaps you’ll get two bottles next time.” Toria glanced over her shoulder at the small dark maw of the tunnel. “Carver says another year,” she murmured. “At least.”
“If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes.”
“And when we’re free we dutifully follow the Ascendant to Callintor, right?”
I said nothing. We had spoken about this little so far and my responses had been carefully phrased evasions, but this time Toria was intent on a proper answer. “Right?” She nudged me with her shoulder. “We traipse around after her as she preaches, faithful congregants that we are.”
“Brewer will, and Carver.” I grunted a laugh. “Hedgeman certainly. You and me can go where we wish.”
“To find the long list of folk you want to kill, you mean?”
“It’s my list. You don’t have to follow.”
“Balls I don’t. You know that.” She paused, reaching for the brandy bottle, which I released after some taunting reluctance. “I’ll follow you and help you kill whoever needs killing. I’m just not convinced that’s your course any more. I see the way you hang on her words. The way you look at her when she’s teaching you. It’s not love; it’s worse. You think she’s going to be happy with you abandoning her holy mission so’s you can go off and drench yourself in blood? You know she won’t. And I know one word from her and you’ll follow her like I’ll follow you.”
I said nothing, feeling Toria’s eyes on me as she took another long drink. “We both know what she thinks she is,” she said, voice a little slurred now. “What she wants to be. Fuck, maybe she’s right. The Covenant must have had their reasons for shoving her in here in the first place. Reasons she’s yet to tell us about. My guess is she scared them, all those grasping hypocrites, and they were right to be scared. Did you know there hasn’t been a new Martyr for three hundred years? The Covenant might love the old Martyrs but you can wager your arse they’d hate any new ones. A new Martyr means change, means fucking up all they’ve built, all they’ve stolen.”
She drank some more then muttered a curse. I watched her upend the bottle to let the last few drops fall before casting it away. It shattered somewhere beyond the reach of the glow cast by our small candle, heralding a brief but thick silence.
“To be a true Martyr she has to die,” Toria stated. “When Martyrs die they usually take all their followers with them. It’s in all the scrolls even though the Supplicants don’t talk about it much. Bloody is the dawn when a Martyr rises. That’s what the old folk say back home.”
“You hate her because she’s an apostate to your people,” I said. “Her brand of lore doesn’t match yours—”
“I don’t hate her at all,” Toria cut in. “That’s the worst of it. She has the gift of making folk love her even when they can see the doom she brings. But, love her or not, there’s no point escaping this place only to find ourselves burnin
g in a heretic’s fire before the year’s out…” She trailed off in annoyance as I turned to the tunnel, frowning at a faint echo that didn’t chime with her diatribe. “You listening?” she demanded with a hard shove.
“Quiet!” I snapped, eyes narrowed to peer into the tunnel’s gloomy interior, straining to detect an odd and unfamiliar sound combining a sibilant hiss with a clacking rattle. “You hear that?”
“Hear what…?” Toria fell silent as the echo abruptly increased in volume, the rattle and hiss becoming a thunderous cascade we both recognised with awful clarity.
“Cave-in!”
I reached for her arm but Toria, never one to hesitate in times of urgency, was already scrambling ahead of me on all fours, worming her way through the narrow crevice into the next chamber. I followed, scraping my hands in the feverish need to get clear, feeling the first displaced boulders thump against my kicking legs. The last four years had made us witness to several tunnel collapses and the ghastly fate of those who found themselves entombed, bones crushed but still clinging to life in the certain knowledge that there would be no rescue.
“Come on!” Toria shouted as I continued to struggle through the crevice. She grabbed my arm and hauled, cursing through clenched teeth. “Why’d you have to grow so fucking big?”
I came free of the crevice with an explosive yell of relief, falling on to Toria as a thick miasma of dust and grit filled the chamber. Clamping our mouths closed, we pinched our noses and groped blindly for the buttressed passage to the next chamber. Breathing in a lungful of this stuff would be just as deadly as being buried under a ton or more of rock.
I crawled until my free hand found a wooden beam. Toria latched her hand onto my belt and we stumbled through the passage to the far larger, cavernous chamber some twenty yards on. My lungs felt like fire by the time we reached it and I was unable to suppress the instinct to breathe. The dust had reached this far but wasn’t so thick, meaning the sudden intake of air failed to kill me, but it did leave me coughing and retching until the pall finally began to settle.
