by Ian Irvine
How could she save herself when she did not know who was hunting her?Ticker-tick-sniffle-tick. The box-fans might have been counting down her remaining moments. Or mocking her increasing panic as she struggled to think of any plan to escape.
There were only two possibilities: to find an unknown way out of Cython, or develop a plan to get through one of the four exits. But after years of searching, she had already exhausted the first possibility. And though a master of disguise might make her way through one of the four guarded exits, Tali had no such skills. Her only hope was magery, the key to everything.
She wiped her sweaty face. Cython was always sweltering and seemed to grow hotter every year. There came a muffled boom, the floor shook and an acrid smell gushed up from the cracked flange around the air duct. Absently, Tali waved it away. Peculiar bangs, shakes and reeks were commonplace here, from the digester chambers, amalgamators, abluters, sublimaters and elixerators on the chymical level below.
‘Alkoyl spill!’ someone roared, distantly. ‘Get help!’ and the healers’ bell began to ring.
Tali did not move — the Pale were not permitted to enter the lower levels. From down the passage she made out the squeaking axles of the rock carts, the crack of stone cloven by splittery and, once, a low rumble that could have been part of the excavation falling in.
She looked around distractedly. The breeze-room diorama offered an enticing glimpse of freedom, a steep mountainside where grey rocks angled up from cropped grass scattered with clumps of yellow sun-daisies. She imagined the doorway as a portal through which she could walk to safety, though even if she’d had command of her gift such magery was as far off as the moon.
Sniffle-sniff.
Tali’s mouth went dry — there was someone in the breeze-room with her. Someone who had been waiting for her, hunting her? She rose to a crouch and began to edge along the wall. How had her hunter known she would come in here, anyway?
No one could have known; Tali hadn’t known herself until she had reached the doorway. She stood up, peered over the box-fans, and started. A pair of huge hazel eyes, the left one black and bruised, stared at her from a grubby, tear-smeared face.
‘What’s yer name?’ said the girl, who looked about ten. A livid hand-print stood out on her left cheek.
‘Tali. Who are you?’
‘I’m Rannilt.’
‘Who’s been hitting you?’
Rannilt shrugged. ‘Why are you hidin’? Are they pickin’ on you too?’
She had a pinched face, a sharp little chin and unusually dark hair for a Pale — almost black. Both knees were scabbed and yellowing bruises covered her thin arms and legs.
‘Not exactly,’ said Tali, wishing the girl would go away. ‘Better get back to work or you’ll be in trouble.’ She returned to her hiding place.
Rannilt scurried around the box-fans and settled beside her. ‘I’m always in trouble.’
‘Well, I’m sure your mother is looking for you.’
‘She’s dead,’ said Rannilt with a tragic sniffle. She wiped her nose in a shiny streak up her forearm, looked up at Tali, fat tears welling in her eyes, then said hopefully, ‘You could be my new mother.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Tali said as kindly as she could. ‘Off you go now, I’m really busy.’
‘You’re not doin’ nothin’.’ Rannilt peered into Tali’s eyes. ‘You look really sad.’
Tali choked, and suddenly it flooded out of her. ‘My best friend got the Living Blade today, and it’s all my fault.’ She sank her head in her hands and wept as she had not done since she was a little girl.
Impulsively, Rannilt threw her arms around Tali and hugged her. ‘There, there. It’ll get better, you’ll see.’
Tali knew it wouldn’t, but could hardly say so to an urchin so much worse off than she was. She wiped her eyes.
‘Got some gummery.’ Rannilt unfolded a toadstool skin wrapper to reveal a grubby orange chunk the size of her fist.
Tali salivated. She hadn’t had the sweet since childhood. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘Nicked it from an enemy dinner trolley,’ Rannilt said proudly. ‘Here.’ She cracked the chunk in half and, after a moment’s hesitation, offered Tali the larger piece.
‘You could be flayed alive for that,’ Tali whispered. All slaves stole food, though only the most reckless took it from the enemy’s table.
‘Got quick fingers.’ Rannilt held up her free hand. Her fingers were crooked, as if the bones had been broken and had set badly.
Tali could not refuse the child’s earnest generosity. ‘Thank you.’ She broke a corner off the chunk, which was oozing wasp-honey, and handed the rest back. ‘I’m not very hungry just now.’
It was a lie. Slaves were always hungry.
She was licking her fingers when a line of male slaves staggered past bearing massive crates on their shoulders, escorted by burly Cythonians with grim expressions. The slaves were gaunt and hollow-eyed, and all wore baggy knee-pants, for the enemy considered exposure of the male thigh to be obscene.
‘Shh!’ said Tali, pulling Rannilt close.
She had never seen male slaves labouring here before. They were held prisoner near the mines and foundries where they worked, and only brought to the women’s quarters for a few days a month, to breed more Pale.
‘What are men doin’ here in daytime?’ said Rannilt.
‘Shh!’
A balding Cythonian guard stopped at the doorway, peering in with eyes so black they looked like holes in his head. The hot blood drained from Tali’s face and her breath thickened in her throat. He seemed agitated. Was he after her? If he came inside he must see them. She squeezed Rannilt’s thin wrist, keep still.
Outside, an emaciated slave stumbled, dropped his crate and it smashed open, spilling dozens of fist-sized, bizarrely shaped metal objects across the passage. Objects with too many legs, and jaws like iron traps, that went clacking and skittering in all directions. With a scutter-click-clack, one shot a foot into the air and its toothed jaws tore into the slave’s calf. He shrieked, knocked it off in a spray of blood and Tali recognised him.
She covered her mouth; she had almost cried out his name. It was Sidon, Nurse Bet’s son. Tali had been friends with him when they were little. Sidon was only two years older than her but his eyes had the death longing in them and his curly red hair had been charred off.
The bald guard turned away, raising a chuck-lash and shouting hoarsely, ‘Get the skritters. Now!’
Tali breathed again. He was just another guard, nothing to do with her.
Sidon drew on an armoured gauntlet and hobbled after the bloody skritter. As he bent to grab it, pieces of crisped skin the size of a hand flaked off his back. He looked like a roasted poulter.
‘Poor man,’ whispered Rannilt, wringing Tali’s forearm between her hands. ‘What have they done to him?’
‘That’s what happens when you work in the heatstone mines.’
What had Sidon done, to be sent to the mines so young? He would be dead in days and it would kill Bet, too.
Tali could not look at him without imagining her father dying the same way, slaving for the vile trade that had caused so many deaths. Her mother and father had loved each other desperately, their passion all the stronger because they saw so little of each other, and his death had shattered her.
Cursed heatstones! They were unnatural, and the Cythonians were afraid to go near them, but they were not afraid to profit from the Pale’s agony, the stinking hypocrites.
Newly cut heatstones were barged down the floatillery to the neutral Merchantery on the southern shore of the lake. There they were bought in private rooms by nationless Vicini traders, and immediately sold, in other private rooms, to Hightspall. Neither Cython nor Hightspall soiled their hands by trading directly with the enemy, and everyone profited. Everyone save the Pale, she thought bitterly, and who cared about them?
‘They got all kinds of lotions at the healery — ’ said Rannilt.
With a strangled sniff, Rannilt closed her mouth, and kept it closed for a minute before the next question burst out of her.
‘What were those horrible things?’ she said, once the skritters had been collected and the slaves driven on. ‘Were they alive?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tali, swallowing. She had never seen anything like them, but the one that had attacked Sidon had been scarily fast. Did the enemy plan to use them on the Pale? She imagined one creeping towards her while she was asleep and bit down a scream.
‘Can I stay with you?’ said Rannilt. ‘Please.’
Tali was tempted, for the girl was generous, and in great need. It was hard to refuse her, but there were thousands of children like her in Cython. Besides, Tali was a danger to everyone around her.
‘I’m sorry. Run back to work, Rannilt, before they notice you’re missing.’
The girl went, with many a big-eyed backward glance, and Tali returned to her previous thoughts. Her father, Genry, had also been looking for a way out, for himself, her mother, Iusia, and my precious daughter.
She wiped her eyes. He had loved her enough to die for her, yet all she remembered of him was a thin, sad-eyed man covered in bruises. If he had found a way out, Genry had not lived to tell Iusia about it. He had died in the heatstone mine on Tali’s sixth birthday.
CHAPTER 9
Her mother’s murderers had been Hightspallers, her own people, but neither the whining man nor the crab-fingered woman was her real enemy. Nor was the treacherous Cythonian, Tinyhead. Tali’s real enemy was never seen, never heard, her mother had said, but he flutters in my nightmares like a foul wrythen.
A wrythen was a terrible spectre from the past, far stronger than a feeble ghost or spirit. Wrythens were said to be immortal and rumoured to have powers of magery that made them invincible. The mere thought of such an unknown, unknowable creature turned her bones to water. How could she hope to defeat one?
Had the wrythen ordered her four direct female ancestors murdered in the same way, over nearly a hundred years? Why would he want to kill insignificant Pale? What passion ran so deep that it treated innocent women as though they were worthless?
Ticker-tick-tick went the box-fans, tolling down Tali’s remaining days.
An overseer ran past, yelling, ‘Miners, come quickly! A terrible accident down at the elixerator. Bring your tools.’
The miners hurried by. Last year an explosion far below had riven the floor of the wax-nut grottoes from one side to the other and blistering green vapour had gushed up, shrivelling ten thousand wax-nut plants as though they had been scorched by fire. Dozens of Pale and five Cythonians had died, choking on bleeding lungs.
The grottoes had been cleared, the fissure blocked with stone wedges shaped by splittery, and life had resumed, but Tali had been bent by a new burden. What was the green mist for? Why had the enemy’s brilliant chymisters created something whose only use was to kill swiftly and painfully?
Her eyes followed the air ducts down. No one knew what they did in the secret levels, though all manner of ores and minerals mined by the slaves were lowered down shafts to the floors below, along with thousands of odd-shaped pieces of metal cast in the foundries. What were they making down there, apart from those clever, deadly skritters?
No one understood the Cythonians, or had any idea what they really wanted, but one thing was clear. They were more clever than anyone imagined, they were working to a plan, and it was rapidly coming to a head.
The dinner gong sounded. Tali slipped out, then noticed a tumble of stone down near the workface, evidently fallen from the tunnel wall in the collapse she had heard earlier. Dim light touched one corner of the pile, which was curious, since the miners had taken their lanterns. After checking behind her, she walked down. The rock fall had opened a small, triangular hole into a narrow service passage, and if she could wriggle through, she might be able to bypass the guard post around the corner. Had the miners not been called away they would have blocked the hole.
Bypassing the guard post did not help. Tali had no way to get through any of the heavily guarded exits from Cython. She turned back.
The tunnel was empty save for a ragged fellow up ahead, kneeling in one of the effluxor sumps. He was so thin that Tali first took him for a slave, until he turned and she saw the empty, blackened sockets and the seeing eye tattooed in the middle of his forehead. It was Mad Wil, also called Wil the Sump because he spent all his days doing slaves’ work, cleaning the sumps until they shone.
Slaves never spoke to their masters unless answering a question, but Wil the Sump was not even master of himself. Tali nodded to him as she approached on silent feet, before remembering that he could not see her. But as she passed, he shot upright in a surge of grey water. His eye sockets were fixed on her and his toothless mouth was gaping.
‘You the one. You the one.’
He scrambled out, reaching towards her with cracked hands that were too big for his puny body. Tali recoiled, for his nasal septum had been eaten away, leaving him with one cavernous, red-rimmed nostril.
‘Not Wil’s fault,’ he wailed. ‘Wil didn’t put them to death. Wil had to protect the story.’ He choked. ‘Ady made him tell. Poor Wil couldn’t help it.’
He turned aside, surreptitiously drawing a small metal tube from inside his coat and uncapping it, and Tali caught a sickly sweet, oily odour. He pressed the tube to his ragged nostril and took a gasping breath. Blood trickled down his upper lip.
She hurried away, but as she reached the corner his voice soared — ‘They all died for you.’
What was he talking about? Her mother and her ancestors? But Wil hadn’t been there when her mother died, and he wasn’t old enough to have seen any of the earlier deaths. He’d been mad since an accident that had taken his eyes a dozen years ago, and maybe he said that to everyone, but it was one disturbing incident too many.
The entrance of the subsistery was carved to resemble the mouth of a grinning eel, one of the main foods in Cython. Tali had thought of it as a rare Cythonian joke, though today it felt like a threat.
Inside, the subsistery was lit in ghostly yellow by dozens of suspended circular plates encrusted with luminous fungi. The wall dioramas were views of the Seethings above Cython — an eerily beautiful wasteland of scalded soil, sinkholes of bubbling mud and glass-clear pools surrounded by concentric bands of red, orange and yellow salts. The dioramas seemed intended to teach another lesson — trying to escape led only to death.
Curved stone tables in various sizes, shapes and colours were scattered around the chamber like an eel’s inner organs, while the kitchen slaves doled out the rations from a heart-shaped counter in the middle. All this month it had been eel-head and mushroom stew with yellow pea bread, though not on Lyf’s Day.
Tali caught the haunting aroma from the doorway and her mouth flooded. The slaves were only given meat on the Cythonians’ most important day of the year, Lyf’s Day. The anniversary of the day their last and greatest king, Lyf, had disappeared two thousand years before.
From her lessons with Waitie, Tali knew that Hightspall also celebrated Lyf’s death, though for a different reason. Hightspall knew Lyf as a liar and oath-breaker who had signed a solemn charter with the Five Heroes, then repudiated it. His treachery had caused the Two Hundred and Fifty Year War between Hightspall and Cythe, which had ended with the Cythians’ ruinous defeat. Centuries later, the broken survivors had taken refuge in their deepest mines, named their underground realm Cython, and had never come out again.
Heads turned as she entered, then a tall slave stood up, Tali’s enemy since they were little girls together, the beautiful Radl. Her black hair shone like anthracite, her eyes were the colour of unpeeled almonds and her skin had the glow of rubbed amber. Radl’s man had been executed last year, baked to death between two heatstones, and since then she had become feral. No one knew who she woul
d turn on next, but she kept the Pale in her section in line more ruthlessly than any overseer.
‘Give it to her,’ said Radl, raising her arms.
The slaves rose, their glares fixed on Tali, blaming her for Mia’s death. Tali faltered. There were no guards inside the subsistery and the women could beat her to paste if Radl so ordered it.
Radl let out a low hiss, then table by table the slaves took it up until the hall echoed, sssssssssss. As Tali tried to stare them down, her face grew so hot it must have been glowing.
Don’t let them beat you. If you can’t take this, how can you hope to survive and escape? She forced herself to take another step, then another. Radl raised her hands like a chorus mistress and the women pulled together on their benches, three hundred unifying against one. The hissing rose and fell, the pressure of all that hatred undermined Tali and her courage cracked.
As she turned to flee, fighting to maintain a wisp of dignity, she noticed a small blonde slave sitting by herself near the entrance to the kitchens, head bowed over her dinner. She was not hissing; indeed, she seemed oblivious to what was going on. The slave was Lifka, and in appearance she was almost Tali’s double.
Lifka’s silence gave Tali heart. She stared down the slaves, met Radl’s eyes and raised her chin in defiance, then went to the serving bench for the feast.
Baking trays held a number of crispy-skinned poulters, each with their four fat drumsticks upright. Cythonian legend held that Lyf had created the four-legged fowl with the magery called germine, as a gift to his suffering people.
A serving slave put the smallest drumstick on a square slate, added some curly, baked roots, a wedge of transparent glass-eel cake and a minute bowl of prawn-head soup. After decanting a measure of the purple-black drink called hulee into a narrow vase until foam rose above the top, she handed the slate to Tali.
Eyeing the glorious drumstick she would not be able to stomach, she took a seat opposite Lifka. Tali met her eyes and said in her most friendly voice, ‘Hello, I’m Tali.’
