We stopped at the entrance to the highest cave and waved to Alpha. We always kept one of the Chorus out front as a guard, though it wasn’t really necessary. There was no way to approach the cave without everyone in the vicinity seeing it. The guards were more about appearances and keeping a sense of normality.
Although, as I ran an eye over Alpha’s weathered frame my own sense of normality took a hit. He’d been worn down by the windstorms, and the dust, and the corrosive materials that the foundry-work put him through. Just like my armor and mask he’d need maintenance from tools we didn’t have yet.
But though his mask was chipped and faded, there was nothing wrong with his salute. Roman style, and I snorted to see it. “DON’T YOU START, TOO.”
“Ave, dictator!”
Not all of our Damned were Romans. In fact, we only had two of them, out of the thirty-three that made up our workforce. But Romans had a way of steamrolling other cultures and incorporating them without too much alienation, so Cassius and Juno had more or less established a baseline protocol that the others followed. Privately, I thought it silly, but like so many other small touches down here it seemed to make them feel better. Made them feel like humans, instead of immortal suffering meat-sacks.
“ANY TROUBLE?”
“Pfft, please. None whatsoever. Ready to handle some filthy lucre?”
“The filthiest!” Vector grinned.
Alpha went inside and came back with one of the few notebooks Vector had brought over with him and a small tin chest, the same one we used every time. I palmed it with one hand and led the way down the hill. As we went, the laborers around the quarry stowed their tools, called into the caves for their comrades, and hastened to meet us at the square-cut block that we’d come to call the altar. I set the chest down on the surface. I opened it to reveal stacks of gleaming leaden coins, each one minted with my mask.
We had plenty of the low-grade stuff left over after refining. Easy enough to work with, easy enough to spare for this custom. I folded my arms while Khalid snapped open the notebook and started reading names. As each of our Damned came up, Vector handed them a few obols, based on how much work they’d done throughout the ‘week’.
Truthfully, money wasn’t very useful at the minute down here. The only things to spend it on were stores that the three of us deemed non-essential, those and favors from either us or the other Damned. I knew they traded them back and forth for crafts and services, and occasionally as apologies for offenses done.
I knew that our little settlement worked better with coin, and though I was well aware of the dangers of rampant capitalism we were a long way from corporations and financial fraud and income inequality. So for now, it was fine. If it started causing problems I’d shut it down.
After all the Damned got sorted out, the Chorus lined up one by one and took their obols. Then it was down to the last two members of our little party.
“Thirteenth Chain is finishing his patrol, yes?” Khalid asked, marking off names in the notebook.
“YES. HE WILL BE IN SHORTLY. WE’LL SEND HIM ROUND THE CAVE FOR HIS SHARE.”
“That leaves me, then.” The Cat slouched forward, eyes glittering with amusement. “Urbi, if you would?” One of the Damned, a dusky bald woman, came up, hands out, shaking badly enough to rattle the Strix-bone beads worked into her leather wrap. She shook a lot, had ever since I’d met her. I wasn’t sure if it was a nervous disorder or something psychological, but she was functional and didn’t cause trouble so that was her business. She took The Cat’s share, then followed him as he beckoned. I watched the other Damned stare stonily as they made their way back into the living quarters that the demons and their hired servant had claimed. Trouble might come from that someday. I made a note to keep an eye on future developments.
“THAT’S PAYROLL DONE.” I snapped the tin chest shut, handed it off to Alpha. “WORK’S DONE FOR THE DAY. WE’RE AVAILABLE FOR BARTER FOR THE NEXT HOUR.”
Coin was only as valuable as what you could buy with it, and between myself, Vector, and Khalid, we could provide a pretty wide range of services and goods. Though it took precious time it kept the workforce happy, and we could and had refused more ludicrous or impractical requests.
Today, though, there was something different in the air. Rather than coming up in drips and drabs to discuss what they could get for their money, about half the Damned gathered around Cassius, and they marched up together. I watched as they stacked obols on the altar, and knew that I’d either love this request or hate it.
“YOU HAVE SOMETHING BIG IN MIND,” I observed.
Cassius nodded. “We do. Are you familiar with Roman baths?”
Oh. Oh! My gaze drifted to the water, streaming down the cliff. Such an obvious idea, and why hadn’t I thought of it first?
Well, no matter. This way got me some of those obols back.
I smiled under my mask. Then I started haggling.
One week later, I settled into the hot water with a sigh. It had taken five or six days to make the parts and cut the stone for this hot tub.
It was worth it. It was all worth it.
The water had been the last ingredient required, the rest we’d put into place bit by bit, in what little spare time we could scrounge. Smoldering lava far below, redirected from the nearby volcanic fields, heated the brass tub. Vector’s membranes served as an airlock, keeping the foul air of Hell out, and oxygen-producing molds flourished on the walls and ceiling, giving the place a fuzzy, dark green coating.
“We need branches,” Juno told me, as she took her place next to me in the bath. “Bark is best for scouring the skin after a good soak.”
“Branches would require wood. Aside from that patch of forest to the west, the one that tried to eat Vector when he investigated it, we don’t have many options there.” I scrubbed at my arms with the pumice stone. “This is the best we can do at the moment.” I put it aside, sunk deeper into the tub, easing my breasts back in. “What Dire really wants are towels.”
“We have too little cloth for that.”
“Dire asked Thirteenth Chain about cloth. No real luck, there. Everything the demons wear that isn’t leather is woven from the hair of the Damned.”
“Hair shirts? They wear hair shirts?” She barked laughter. “I thought we were here to repent, not them.”
“Dire is also disinclined to investigate that option, if the stories The Cat told her of the lice down here are true.”
“I am not sure why you wish to.” She cast a longing gaze at my clothes and underthings, stacked neatly in one of the cubbies. “So soft! And the colors are so vibrant.”
“And so ragged. Didn’t plan on coming here. Only have the one set, and repeated washing is doing a number on those.” I rubbed my chin. “Could ask Vector to see if we could breed something like flax. Or cotton.”
Though I wondered if we’d have time for that. We’d spent months here already, enlisted more Damned, and built up a presence... but we would be leaving Hell before too long, if our plans worked out. If they didn’t, we’d be dead.
Maybe we could leave behind a starter crop, for Damned who stumbled upon it. Which would be immediately seized by demons after we were gone, so not so great an idea, there.
I drummed my fingers on the edge of the tub.
And that was the problem, really. These were people, down here. Regardless of what they’d done to get here, they were suffering when they didn’t have to.
I was in a position to do something about it.
The original plan had been to take Beaky and jet down the pit, use surprise and force to get as far as we could until we reached the exit that Khalid insisted was beyond Lucifer. Then hopefully either reason with or beat up the devil until he was no longer an obstacle.
But...
I didn’t want to leave these people behind.
Khalid insisted that they had earned their fate, and while he wasn’t unkind, he kept himself as aloof as he could around them. Me, I couldn’t do that.
Could they leave Hell? What would happen to them? I needed these questions answered before I could make any long-term plans or promises.
My musings were interrupted when the door opened and Cassius pushed his way through the membranes. He shucked his pants into one of the cubbies and glanced toward Juno, then did a double-take when he saw me. “Who are you?”
“Who do you think she is?” Juno asked.
He shrugged. “I do not know the faces of everyone saved from the spires.”
Juno waved at my armor, standing silent sentinel in the back corner of the cave.
“Ah. Lady Dire.” He saluted the empty armor, thumped his chest, and eased into the water, while looking me over. “Whoever you are, you seem fair of face. After we are clean, would you like to fuck?”
Ah, Romans. “No, she will pass on the fucking, but that’s a nice compliment.”
“A pity then.” He eased into the water, closed his eyes, and settled back. Juno laughed until she coughed.
Twenty-three seconds later, Cassius’ face slowly turned into a mask of mortification. He cracked an eye open, looked to me, looked at the armor, looked back to me again. “You, ah, you are the Lady Dire, are you not?”
“Yes, she is.”
“I should not have presumed to solicit you.”
“It is well. She is not offended.”
“Ah. Good.” His face relaxed, and he opened his other eye, studied me frankly. “It seems strange, to see the woman beneath the mask.”
“Had you doubts?”
“Frankly, yes. When you first descended from the heavens to pluck us loose from the spire, I took you to be one of the Muses. I am still not certain you are not some form of goddess.”
“As Dire has stated before, she is not.” Time to change the topic. “How fare the labor crews?”
“The work goes well, but the boredom is bad. The Damned do not sleep. But this place drains you... saps energy and encourages indolence. When we are exhausted there is little to do, and fights have happened.” He sighed. “Some have taken to carving bone dice, and this is good. Gambling has started among them, and this is the way of civilized men so we must let it happen. I have forbidden the staking of debts that take more coin than one has on hand, or for services that take more than one day to repay. But my words are not always heeded. When I find people disobeying me I shut it down, but eventually fools will get into trouble unless we find some other way to fill our time.”
“Plays, perhaps?” Juno asked. “Those were my favorite thing, back while I could still walk and venture outdoors.”
“Your legs seem to be fine now,” I observed.
“Ah, I am older than I look. I lived for sixty years in Rome. My body seems of age from when I was twenty.”
I frowned. “Strange. Cassius, are you also older?”
“No. As far as I can remember, I looked this way when my life ended.”
“Now why is that?” I mused. No, focus. Problems in the camp. “So we need something to entertain bored and exhausted people.”
“Well, yes. Fucking’s out, it’s not much fun when you’re exhausted. The baths will help for a time, but eventually they’ll become boring.” He paused and I watched the thoughts pass behind his eyes. Finally he came to a decision. “Also, the demons are a problem.”
“What have they done?” I asked.
“Nothing, yet. But they are demons, and many whisper that they should die before they betray us. The labor crews shun them and gripe that they get the easy tasks.”
I shrugged. “They get the tasks they are best suited for. The Cat has no thumbs and couldn’t wield a pickaxe even if he wanted to. And Thirteenth Chain is the only rider that Burren will tolerate.”
“Yes, and I know that, but the labor crews will grumble. This will come to trouble unless we do something.”
Unless we do something. I caught that, as he threw it out there, unthinking. I was starting to sell him on my enterprise, despite his dour and suspicious nature. Good.
“Thank you for bringing this to Dire’s attention.” I rose from the bath, sat on the bench near the hot rocks, and let myself steam dry. “She’s going to have to think on it, figure out how to best distract the idle and figure out how to do some team-building exercises.” That last phrase didn’t translate well in Latin. “How is your English coming, by the way?”
“It’s well,” said Juno. “Easy compared to Greek.”
“It is the hardest thing I have ever done,” Cassius said. “But I believe I am making progress. It is very hard to believe this strange tongue is descended from Imperial Latin.”
I nodded. “Good. Keep at it.”
Once dried, clothed, clean, and back in my armor I strode from the cave, hands clasped behind me, brooding.
We had about thirty people now, the most that we could take without obviously depopulating the local spires. The demons were strong and tough compared to any normal human, but they’d easily get torn apart if five or six people with steel spikes and grudges caught them alone in one of the caves.
“We need to humanize them,” I told my Chorus, once I was back in Beaky’s ready room. “It’d be good if we could simultaneously provide some entertainment. Juno’s mention of plays struck a nerve... for the most part we’ve got people here from around the B.C.’s or a few centuries beyond. Oral traditions are going to be a thing, storytelling and the like. We’ve also got dice, but want to shun gambling. So what can we do with these?”
They looked at each other for a bit, and Delta sat up like she had a loose wire. “Hey, do we still have those leftover thin sheets of burren leather? The ones that aren’t tough enough for clothes?”
Burren leather peeled off in sheets of varying thickness, as it turned out. We’d been using the thicker stuff for tarps, pumps, and other industrial supplies, and the thinner stuff for clothes. But the really thin stuff... I racked my memory, realized I hadn’t been handling that part of the logistics, and looked to our unofficial quartermaster. “Gamma?”
“We do have a lot of the softer stuff left over. It’s about as thin and fragile as paper, though.”
Delta leaned forward, hands spread wide, mask quivering with barely-suppressed excitement. “So what about Monsters and Mangonels?”
I blinked. “Say what?”
“M&M. We’ve got dice, we’ve got paper, we’ve got cultures that respect storytelling. This’ll blow their minds!”
“You’re seriously going to try M&M with ancient Romans, Axumites, Native Americans, and whatever the hell those guys with the pale skin are?”
“Oh, not just them. I wanna get the demons in on this too. And Vector. And maybe Beta.”
I took a long look at her. “You really think they’d be all right with this?”
“Trust me, I’ve heard a ton of stories from Ray about his level thirteen wizard and how he survived Cravenloft.”
Ray? No, wait, Vector’s real name was Raymond.
She’d called him Ray. And was spending a fair chunk of time around him, if he was telling her about his hobbies. I spent time around him too, and I’d never heard of any high-level arcanists. Just how well was she getting to know him, and for what reason?
Then again, she always was the most gregarious of the Chorus, the most outgoing and fun-loving. She could just be good friends with him, and I could be reading too much into the possibilities, here.
Still, Ray. I finished my train of thought in microseconds, taking advantage of my superpower’s enhanced processing speed, and smiled at her. “All right. Make it clear that it’s voluntary, to all parties involved.” I gnawed my lip. “Maybe not for the demons. Make it mandatory for them. They’re more comfortable with straight-up orders than suggestions.”
“Why do you want me to play?” Beta asked Delta.
She grinned. “You’re like the best listener we’ve got. And you want to go into therapy services eventually, help people with their problems. You’ll make a perfect cleric!”
“I don�
�t plan on being a priest. Especially not after seeing Hell personally. I have no desire to worship or advocate worship for a deity who inflicts this sort of punishment on people, even if they did commit evil.”
“You could be a priest of a non-Christian religion,” I offered. “From what Khalid says, other gods have different afterlifes.”
Beta’s mask moved from side to side as he shook his head. “For now, no.”
“Look, the gods in M&M aren’t real,” Delta protested. “What I mean by being a cleric is that they’re the class that gets to heal everyone, and kind of act as the rallying point for the group. You’ve got good empathy, and you’re not pushy; you’d do a good job with it.”
“Oh. That’s fine then.”
“Right.” I steepled my fingers. “Make it happen. See if it helps with group bonding, buys the demons a little acceptance, and helps alleviate the boredom of the Damned. We really don’t have anything to lose with it; if it fails we try something else.”
“Right! And we’re already in Hell anyway, so even if that Chick guy is right we won’t be any more damned!”
I blinked. “What?”
“Oh, you see, there’s this obsessive guy who draws pamphlets—”
The radio cut in. “Doctor, Thirteenth Chain’s coming in fast.” Epsilon’s voice. We’d left him on watch duty.
“Any pursuit?”
“No, but I’m getting some dust clouds out on the horizon. Could be another chaingang.”
“Confirmed. The rest of you to Beaky’s battle stations. Dire will go down and meet our scout personally, see what bodes.” I suited up, suppressing a shudder as I sealed myself back into my armor’s shell. Now that I was clean, the reek of the interior was starting to get to me. Next step was scrounging up cleaning supplies and drudging it out... if we had time, later.
DIRE : HELL (The Dire Saga Book 6) Page 6
