The Fade kj-2

by Chris Wooding

  Daquii runs down from the platform to see to Feyn. Bal moves to the edge to observe what's happening, but he doesn't abandon his post.

  It's good enough.

  Charn, recognising the signal, is casting about for me. I wave to him. He glances uncertainly at Bal, but I don't give him time to falter. I throw the key to him.

  This was always the weak part of the plan, but there just wasn't any way to get close enough. It was always going to be risky.

  In the dim light, Charn's catch is bad. The key bounces out of his hands, clatters to the floor. He drops and scrabbles it up. Bal almost turns back, but Feyn trips on the walkway and collapses just as Daquii reaches him, providing a much more interesting spectacle.

  Charn is still dithering. I gesture angrily, and he gets to work. I don't know what he's got up there, some tray of soft metal or clay. I'm not certain. He was bleating about needing to keep it at the right temperature to take the impression properly. But in the end, he's remarkably quick. Two firm presses, one on each side, and the key is back in his hand.

  Bal glances over at the blacksmiths, not suspecting anything, then turns back to the commotion below. I breathe out. One of the other blacksmiths, a shifty sort called Relk, is watching us with interest. It can't be helped. Charn checks the guards, throws the key back to me. I suddenly realise how difficult it is to see a small, dull metal object in a room churning with bright fire and smoke. Somehow I catch it anyway.

  Then I'm gone. Feyn's done his part; Charn I can leave to do whatever he has to do to make that key. I have my own job.

  Alone, I move faster. Back across the forge, racing, racing. The prisoners know something's up, but that doesn't matter. They won't give me away. It's the guards I'm concerned about. If I'm caught, they'll execute me for sure.

  I see the guard on the walkway a mere sliver of a moment before he looks my way. It's enough time for me to stop dead and to throw myself flat against the metal wall of a mineral tank. He stares down the dark corridor between the tanks, wondering whether he really saw what he thought he saw, wondering whether it's worth clambering in there to find out.

  Long seconds pass.

  He moves on. I let out my breath. Prudence dictates that I give him plenty of time to vacate the area before I set off again. It's time I don't have. He's barely out of earshot before I'm scrambling up on to the walkway, down the other side. Heading for the furnaces, the last stop on Overseer Arachi's tour. We've wasted too much time. Maybe Charn was right, maybe it can't be done.

  Then suddenly I'm there, and my heart sinks into my stomach.

  His tour has progressed faster than I thought. He's just leaving the furnaces. I emerge from the shadows in time to see him walking away. The guard is following him, perfectly positioned to impede my access to his belt pouch. There's nothing left but a short and uninterrupted stroll back to the stairs. I can't get to him, short of running up and grabbing him. I'm frantic for some excuse, desperate, as every step takes him further away from me. But nothing's coming to mind.

  That's when I spot Nereith. The hairless Khaadu, his body wet with sweat, shovel buried in a coke pile. He's seen me. Our eyes meet. Something there, but I don't know what. Then he pulls out his shovel and digs it into the coke dust on the edge of the pile, drawing up a big spadeful. Just like he told me not to do when I was working here.

  He slings the coke dust into the mouth of the furnace, and it bellows flame. The searing cloud rolls out with a roar, and the workers fall back with cries of alarm, their arms shielding their faces. One of them is scorched badly. He falls, rolling on the ground, swearing in pain. The cloud of fire burns out as fast as it appeared, more impressive than deadly, but the commotion is enough that the Overseer and his guard notice it. The guard, pleased that he has something to do, rushes down to help. Arachi seems caught between wanting to lend a hand and maintaining a dignified aloofness. I can see he's tormented by this shift's disastrous tour. Two workers injured: it's a calamity for him.

  He doesn't see me slide up behind him and put the key back in his pouch. It's far easier to put something into a pocket than to take it out.

  The burned prisoner is taken away to be seen to. Angry words are exchanged, and Nereith fends them off with protests of his own. The Overseer mutters about new safety procedures and the guard is thinking of the stories he'll have to tell his friends when he comes off-shift. But I'm already gone, heading back to the salvage dump. No sense getting caught now, and no point waiting around to thank Nereith. He doesn't want my thanks.

  He knew. He knew what I was doing, and he helped me, and that only means one thing. He wants in. And now he's earned it, the canny bastard.

  It seems there are four of us now.

  25

  They don't know who I am, these Gurta; they don't know the kind of precautions they should be taking. This prison can't hold me.

  I'm more awake and alive than ever. I can't believe that shuffling, silent figure they brought into this place was me. I can't believe I was so weak. It makes me cringe to think of it.

  I should have been trying to get out of here from the start, instead of wallowing in pain. My son is out there in the war somewhere. I know how things work: he probably hasn't even heard the news from Korok yet. He hasn't heard that his father is killed and his mother presumed so. I can't bear that he should think I'm dead. I can't bear that he should hear it from some official, in a dirty barracks in some forsaken hole in the Borderlands.

  He doesn't know I'm still alive. And voids, I don't know if he's alive. But I have to get to him. It's the most important thing in the world to me now. I have to tell him he can come home. His father's gone: he died proud. But now there's no reason for Jai to stick it out any more. I have a letter at home that can get him out of the Army, and into the University. I want him to come back. To me, to Reitha, to safety. Before he gets himself killed.

  Alert, I miss nothing. I memorise which guards bitch about which, who plays flip-chits with who. I know about money owed and money lent. I study the side-passages as we're marched from forge to cell to quad to food-hall. I construct a layout of this place in my mind and study it silently in the dark when I'm sitting in our cell.

  And I start to see cracks in their security.

  The guards are slovenly, safe in the knowledge that the prisoners are deep inside a garrisoned fort. As long as certain doors are kept locked, sealing the prisoners inside their own complex of corridors and cells, then they think escape attempts are futile. The perimeter of our prison section is tightly policed, but what goes on within is not. Guards do not take head-counts at any point. We swap jobs in the forge all the time, and nobody cares as long as the jobs are done. Prisoners often disappear, taken away by scholars. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don't. It's possible to slip away and not be missed by anyone.

  Despite the strict laws that govern them, Gurta are naturally disorganised. Discipline is imposed on them by society, so they have no need to foster it between themselves. It makes them a volatile people, their institutions patchy with feuds and infighting. Their army has suffered more defeats because of their basic nature than anything else. Their willingness to throw their lives away for their cause makes them fearsome opponents, but their inability to work together makes them sloppy.

  I know these people well. I've escaped them before, I can do it again.

  I begin to make my plans. The Gurta may be lax, but their confidence is at least partially justified. I'm forced to discard most options because I would be discovered within hours. Guards would notice an unlocked door, a missing key, and they would begin searching. I could evade them, maybe; but I don't fancy my chances of escape if the whole place is after me.

  Besides, there's a complication. I'm not going alone. Feyn is coming with me.

  I don't even want to think about why. Leaving him here would be to condemn him to death, but that in itself isn't a reason to bring him. There's a whole prison full of people in the same boat. And if I'd never come here, he
'd still be being battered regularly, waiting for his captors to get round to cutting him up.

  Anyway, I'm not responsible for the boy. That's the point.

  So why do I feel that I am?

  He's curiously evasive when I ask him about his time in Farakza. He speaks of past events in a very roundabout way, and tends not to refer to himself. Maybe he's over-modest, I don't know. But eventually I glean the facts by implication. He used to be a curiosity for the scholars here, but he made sure only to speak in his native language and to feign ignorance of Eskaran, to prevent them interrogating him about his culture. His people don't like to give up their secrets to outsiders.

  The scholars tried to decipher his speech for a long time, failed, and soon left him alone to concentrate on more rewarding tasks. Obviously the order to keep him alive still stood, though he apparently wasn't so valuable that they would trouble to protect him from the beatings of other prisoners.

  Well, all that is by the by. I need his help. The idea that I have requires more than one person. In fact, it requires a third member, too. Someone I'm not looking forward to talking to.

  The man who tried to rape me while I was drugged.

  Charn. Other prisoners have been extending wary gestures of friendship. A tacit nod in the food hall here and there, a raised hand across the smoky forge. In the quad, a skinny Eskaran man with a deformed leg invites me to play a game he's invented, involving a series of grids drawn in dirt on the flagstones, using pebbles as markers. It has some serious flaws in the rules, easily exploitable; but for a time, I'm diverted, and I find that I'm enjoying myself.

  His name is Juth, it emerges, and he's a publisher from Veya. He'd travelled to a village near the Borderlands in response to an intriguing letter from an author, promising a story unlike anything Juth had read before. While he was there, Gurta raiders sacked the village, having somehow got behind Eskaran lines. The author was killed, the manuscript burned along with the village, and Juth was captured when a blazing spar fell on his head and knocked him cold. He shows me the burns on his hairless scalp, beneath his cloth cap. Then he shows me the far more horrific ones on his back.

  'My great regret,' he says, 'is that I read a portion of the manuscript before these barbarians came to destroy it. It was the most wonderful literature. I would rather have remained ignorant, so that I could pretend it did not matter that it is lost forever.'

  Charn and Nereith mutter with their gang of cronies, casting glances my way. I doubt they have the courage to try anything, though I'm sure they would if they thought they could get away with it. But they're scared of me, and they're scared of Gendak. I meet with the scholar semi-regularly now, and that affords me some protection. If I were to be hurt, the Gurta might take an interest in my attackers.

  Gendak's questions are gliding closer and closer to matters that I can't talk about. He wants to know about Ledo and Clan Caracassa. Things deeper than his usual sources can provide. Given the right motivation there will always be traitors willing to sell information to the Gurta, so anything that is public knowledge at home is safe enough to discuss. But he's feinting and probing, wanting more from me, retreating when I evade but always edging closer to his goals. I'm still undecided as to whether he's in it purely for knowledge, or if he's digging for secrets his masters can use against mine. Either way, we're going to come to an impasse soon. Things might get unpleasant then.

  Feyn and I talk over my plan for escape, and we search for alternatives. For such a passive boy, he's fearless now he's decided we're getting out. His people are not afraid of death or punishment; in fact, their philosophy appears to involve not giving a shit about anything. He couches it in slightly more elegant terms, though I'm sure I'm only getting the outline and not a true understanding. They believe all connections are temporary, so to cling to them makes no sense. When someone is gone, they're gone. Live for now; the present is all there is. You can't know what will happen next, so why worry? Consequences are natural and inevitable. Just do what you feel you must.

  The SunChildren, if he is representative, strike me as a very calm people, and yet they're impulsive too. I really think he was, as he says, just waiting. Waiting to die, or waiting for something to change. I was that change. I've offered him a possibility of escape which he didn't have before. Even if he had to push me a little to get me going.

  So now he's decided that we're getting out of here, whatever the risk. The idea of dying in the attempt doesn't faze him in the least.

  I like this boy. He's weird, but I can't help wanting to look after him. 'I need to talk to you.'

  Charn tears a strip of meat off the bone and puts it in his mouth. They've been feeding us well lately, presumably watching what effect it has on our mood and work. He's making a show of being unconcerned, but I know being this close to him makes him jumpy.

  He's sitting at a bench, Nereith opposite. The two men I injured the time I broke Charn's nose are no longer part of his crowd. They were taken away and never came back. I don't know what happened to them, and I don't really care.

  'Food good?' I enquire of the Khaadu. He shows me his teeth in a disparaging snarl. Khaadu hate cooked food, and he's probably as nauseated by the slab of grilled hookworm on his plate as I would be if I ate it raw.

  'You want to talk, talk,' says Charn. I'm leaning close to him, and I can actually feel him trembling with adrenaline.

  'Alone.'

  There's a long moment when he decides what to do, but ultimately he has to maintain the show that he's not afraid of me. He gets up, and we walk to a sparsely occupied bench. The guards watch us go, as do most of the prisoners in the food hall. We sit down, on opposite sides, away from the others.

  The bruises round his eyes have almost faded now: only a sickly yellow pallor remains. He's much bigger than me, but he's chewing his pierced lower lip in agitation, rotating the rings with his tongue. Sweat beads his bald pate, but that's probably the heat in here.

  'What?' he says, sullen and impatient. He feels I've won a victory by making him get up and come with me. Which I have.

  'I need your help,' I say. It's not so hard; I'm not afflicted with an excess of pride, so there's nothing to swallow.

  I expect him to laugh, but he doesn't. 'You need my help with what?'

  I hesitate, just a moment. I have to risk trusting him. 'An escape.'

  That gets his interest. He sits back, thinks. 'You cut me in on it,' he says. 'I get out too, or I walk away right now.'

  'Just you,' I say. 'Nobody else. You don't breathe a word to anyone.'

  He looks over at the table he's just come from. Nereith is watching us intently. 'Who else is going?'

  'Feyn.' I see the expression on his face and add: 'Don't worry. He doesn't do grudges.'

  He stares at me for a long time. Thinking hard. But he knows, as we all do, that sooner or later our time here will be up. And the end that awaits us is not a pleasant one. There've been insurrections in the past, but they always result in the prisoners being slaughtered. What keeps us in check is the futility of rebellion, the hard labour, the shifting schedule and the slim hope that somehow we will be liberated before our time comes. The prisoners try to make themselves useful to their captors, seeking to stave off their executions indefinitely. Men believe what they need to believe.

  Charn's not stupid. 'Tell me the plan,' he says.

  I lean closer. Our voices are quiet enough that nobody can overhear. 'The forge.'

  'What about it?'

  'Every shift, the Overseer takes a tour of the forge at exactly the same time. He comes through a metal door, high up on one of the walls.'

  'I know it. I see him.'

  'He locks it behind him, makes his inspections, then returns through the door and presumably locks it again.'

  'Everyone knows that,' he says impatiently. 'What's the plan? Steal his key?'

  'Exactly.'

  He smirks, derisive. 'Think you're the first that thought of that? Some problems. First, the key's kept
in his belt pouch, and he's always got a guard with him. If they catch your hand down his trousers, pardon the expression, they'll cut it off.'

  'I can handle that. Next objection?'

  Disbelief crosses his face. He's sceptical that I can dismiss the problem so easily. 'Alright then. Second and very large flaw in your plan: what happens when he gets to the end of his inspection, tries to open his door, and finds his key is gone?'

  'They'll search everyone. If they don't find it they'll reason it's been hidden, and probably begin killing us until someone owns up or until they believe it's really been lost. Then they change the locks.'

  'Exactly,' he says, in mocking imitation of me. It's not a very good impression.

  'Unless it's back in his pouch by the time he gets to the door.'

  Now he does laugh. Short, harsh. He wipes his hand over his face, hunkers closer. 'You want to steal the key off him, then put it back in his pouch before he completes his rounds?'

  I hold his eyes, letting him feel my determination.

  'And what happens in between these two highly improbable events?'

  'You take an impression of the key.'

  Suddenly he understands why I need him. But I see something else there too. The tiniest chink of hope.

  'It'll never work,' he says. 'You'd have to get the key off him near the start of his tour, get all the way across the forge without being seen, get the key to me – you know the blacksmiths are most heavily guarded of all, right?'

  'I know.'

  'I can make an impression of the key without them noticing, that's easy enough. I can even get the key back to you. But for you to get across the forge again and put it back in his pouch?' He gives me a look like I'm insane. 'It'll never work. There's not enough time.'

  'It can be done,' I insist. 'And if we fail, it's me who'll be punished, not you.'

  'I'll be more than punished if they catch me with the key,' he mutters. 'They trust me. They know I don't misbehave. Taken me a long time to get them that way.'