by Ian Irvine
‘Stupid Rannilt can’t do anything right,’ said the tall girl, and the other four sniggered. The guards took no notice.
‘Sorry, sorry.’ Rannilt was rubbing a gashed knee and blushing. Tali had never seen anyone go so red. ‘Always doin’ that. Really clumsy, I am.’
Tali could hardly ignore the girl; that was bound to arouse suspicion. She helped Rannilt up. ‘Blood’s runnin’ down yer leg,’ she said, trying to imitate Lifka’s stolid indifference and knowing her voice did not sound right.
‘It’s nothin’. I’m always fallin’ over.’
Or being pushed. Bullying was common among the slaves. The terrorised herd picked on the weakest.
Rannilt looked up at Tali, stared and her eyes widened. She smiled, she was going to say hello. Tali put on a ferocious scowl, gave a stiff jerk of the head and waved her away. Rannilt looked hurt, sniffled and wiped her nose on an arm covered in shiny streaks.
‘More water,’ snapped the nearest guard.
Rannilt gathered her buckets and limped off. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said to every Pale she went by.
Tali let out her breath. The line of slaves moved around the corner, then stopped. Up ahead, the leading slave put her left foot on a square stone. A black-haired Pale locked a bracelet around her ankle while a guard looked on. The bracelet had an odd bulge at the front, the size of a child’s fist. Tali began to sweat. Lifka hadn’t mentioned this.
Didn’t tell ya everythin’, she had gloated. What was the bracelet for?
Panic swelled until it was choking Tali. This was her punishment for using Lifka so cruelly, for being such a hypocrite. She should have worked harder to find out everything Lifka knew. Instead of attacking the girl, she should have befriended her.
Too late now. If she left the line, the guards would know something was wrong. Besides, Banj’s most fleet-footed guards would be racing this way. How long before they got here? Ten minutes? Fifteen at the most. She had to put on an act such as she had never done before.
As she lifted her small, pale foot onto the stone, ice formed along her backbone. Who looked at a slave’s feet? The guard supervising the ankle bracelets, that’s who.
Instinctively, Tali pressed her fingers to her slave’s mark. Don’t notice any difference, she prayed. I’m Lifka. I am. She licked dry lips, allowed her jaw to sag and put on a listless stare.
The black-haired slave’s eyes were on Tali’s ankle as her fingers locked the silver bracelet in place. It was heavy and uncomfortably warm, and the ominous bulge at the front was made from a reddish metal engraved with Cythonian glyphs which Tali could not read.
The guard came forwards, bearing a graduated brass squirter, and squeezed a single drop of an orange, chymical fluid into a small hole on the top of the bulge. The bulge gave forth a faint ticking sound and Tali felt it vibrating against her shinbone, reminding her uncomfortably of a skritter.
Then the slave frowned, looked up sharply, and she was the last Pale Tali wanted to see — the beautiful savage who had led the hissing in the subsistery, Tali’s childhood enemy, Radl.
Don’t betray me. Please, please don’t betray me.
Radl smiled, displaying her pointed teeth.
Tali rubbed her scar. Time stopped, then jerked forward a second; another.
Radl said something to the guard, too softly for Tali to hear. Now the guard was studying Tali’s ankle, frowning. He knew! It was all over.
She pressed harder on her scar. You can’t see anything different. I’m Lifka and I’ve got broad, tanned feet.
The guard’s black eyes crossed, then he waved her on, irritably. Tali met Radl’s blue eyes. Her lips moved and Tali read, Leaving you to your enemy, bitch.
Tali forced herself to not react, but as she went on her legs felt de-boned. The twin lines moved towards the loading station, where a pair of burly Pale eunuchs, their smooth, indecent thighs well covered, lifted the rectangular, faintly shimmering sunstones from a stack and lowered one into the leather pouch on the back of each slave’s harness. A Cythonian foreman studied the faces and checked each woman off on his list.
Sunstones were the size of tombstones and each slave shrank an inch or two under the enormous weight. Tali braced herself and moved forwards, trying to look as docile and vacant-eyed as Lifka. The bulge on the ankle bracelet seemed to be ticking more loudly than before and the vibration felt as though teeth were meshing inside it.
The foreman inspected Tali, checked her off but then, instead of waving her past, thrust back her hood and turned her head from side to side. Tali’s mouth went dry. If he made her remove the harness, her lack of calluses would reveal the deception at once.
‘Name?’
‘Lifka, Master,’ she said in Lifka’s colourless voice.
‘What’s the matter with you?’
Was the voice wrong? Her skin too pale? Not knowing what had alerted his suspicions, Tali had no idea how to remedy things. ‘Master?’
‘Why are you sweating?’
‘Gripe, Master.’ Tali touched her belly and winced. ‘Gut gripe.’
Her belly looked like Lifka’s, at least. She pushed it out and swayed forwards, praying he would not notice her pale feet.
CHAPTER 22
Tali felt like screaming hysterically, head-butting the guard in the belly then running wild and pushing over all the sunstones.
The guard was staring at her as though he knew she was an impostor and was waiting for her to crack. She kept her eyes lowered like a docile slave, bit her tongue until it hurt, and waited. And waited. In her mind’s eye she could see Banj’s runners sprinting down the tunnels, surely only minutes away. He would also have informed the matriarchs that a slave was trying to escape, and that there had been no reply from the maze guards. They would know she was the one and their executioners would also be on the way.
After an agonising minute the guard grunted, flipped the hood over Tali’s golden hair and gestured her to the loading station. The Pale eunuchs were built like wrestlers, yet they grunted as they lifted each sunstone from the stack and rotated it to the vertical. As the first eunuch raised Tali’s stone, it slipped.
‘Don’t drop it!’ cried the second eunuch, steadying the sunstone with both hands. He cast an anxious glance at the guards.
‘Ready?’ the first eunuch said to Tali. Sweat was running down his round face and dripping from his chin.
‘Yes,’ she said in Lifka’s empty voice, then realised that she had forgotten to push out her lower lip.
The first eunuch did not move. He was holding the weight of the stone, his gaze travelling up and down her small form as if he did not believe she could carry it. Now he was looking at her feet. His eyes flicked to the second eunuch, then he smiled, ever so faintly. He knew!
She met the eunuch’s eyes, praying that he would not give her away, yet knowing that most slaves would. Betraying another slave meant favour with the guards, and extra rations. And for many, the pleasure of seeing a troublesome rebel brought down.
Please, she said through her eyes.
The eunuch’s eyes misted, as if looking upon a daughter he would never have, and his lips moved. Good luck.
There was one good man left in Cython, at least, and it gave her heart. She tilted her head to him.
‘Move it,’ the second eunuch said curtly.
As Tali braced herself for the weight, heat flickered around the loops and whorls of the scar on her shoulder and she felt a momentary dizziness. She put her hand across her shoulder and the dizziness passed, though the scar still felt hot.
Holding the sunstone vertically, the first eunuch slipped it into the long leather pouch at the back of her harness and stepped away. Tali’s knees almost collapsed and a groan was squeezed out of her. It was impossible; her backbone was compressing, her arches flattening until her feet looked like twin tortoises. She could barely stand up under the weight. No way could she carry the sunstone a thousand steps to the surface.
The second eunuch was lo
oking at her curiously so she lurched off, following the line of carriers. If she did not reach the top of the shaft before Banj’s runners arrived, she was lost.
The sunstone should have been cool, its absorbed sunlight being reduced to the faintest shimmer, but Tali could feel its presence at her back as if an alien force was surging and ebbing in its core. How many thousands of Pale men and boys had died mining heatstone, and the concentric layers of sunstone and glowstone that surrounded the blistering heatstone mine?
An arched opening led into a ten-sided shaft running vertically to the surface. A stairway with shallow stone steps coiled around it and the leading carriers were already halfway up. The walls around the base of the shaft were blackened, as if a fire had once burnt there, and the edges of several steps looked glassy. The upper section of the shaft was dimly lit and she could not tell how high it was, but it had to be hundreds of feet to the top. To Hightspall, the beloved realm, the homeland the Pale had yearned for all the thousand years of their enslavement.
The leading slaves were striding up the steps as if it were a race. Tali pressed back against the wall, waiting her turn, and it felt as though the bones of her feet were cracking.
‘What’s wrong with you, Lifka?’ a stocky slave girl said, elbowing Tali in the side.
‘Gut gripe,’ Tali said faintly.
‘If you can’t take it, call sick. If you drop a sunstone …’ The slave girl shivered.
The entire sunstone gang would be punished. It was the Cythonian way — the group suffered for the failings of the individual, therefore the group enforced the enemy’s will as ruthlessly as any slave master.
‘I’m all right,’ said Tali. ‘I can do it.’
She stepped onto the lowest step, but as she stretched for the second the weight of the sunstone pulled her off balance. Her arms flailed and she was falling backwards with no hope of recovery, failing at the first hurdle.
As abruptly, she went flying forwards. The slave behind her had shoved hard on her sunstone.
‘Thanks,’ she choked, stumbling but recovering.
‘Keep right, sluggard.’
She lurched to the wall side of the stair and the slave barged past, cursing her. The ankle bracelet vibrated, scutter-click-click, reminding her of the skritter that had embedded itself in the flesh of Sidon’s calf. Tali took another step, careful to lean forwards, then another. Her breath was wheezing in and out, her knees wanted to collapse and her thigh muscles were ablaze.
By the time she made it to the first landing half the line of slaves had passed her. She stopped, gasping, but could not drag enough air into her lungs to satisfy her desperate needs. Her face was burning, sweat flooding down her chest. At her back, the core of the sunstone seemed to be throbbing in time with her racketing heart.
Scutter-click-click. The bracelet tightened around her ankle and she felt a series of little prickings there, like a warning of pain to come. That’s where those little scars around Lifka’s ankles came from.
From high above, great bolts were drawn back, clanking against their brackets. She heard the thud of heavy doors pushed wide and yellow light washed in. Tali caught her breath and her eyes misted — it was the first daylight she had ever seen.
She lurched up to the next landing and stopped again, her legs unable to drive her any further. Leaning back against the wall, she allowed it to take part of the weight and prayed she would be able to stand upright again.
By the time she made the third landing her heart was palpitating. At this rate she would not have to worry about being caught; she would die of apoplexy. Her muscles were melting, the shoulder straps felt as though they had torn her flesh down to the collarbones and her vision was going in and out of focus. Was this how her poor father had died, worked to death for seeking a way out?
Click-scutter-clack. The bracelet tightened again, its points pricking and biting all around her ankle. Horror froze her for a second, somehow worse because the bracelet was a relentless mechanical weapon driven by that drop of chymical fluid. It felt nothing, cared about nothing, and there was nothing she could do to get it off her ankle.
The pain cleared her head, though, temporarily pushing the burden of the sunstone into the background. The first slaves had reached the top. Even the stragglers were two flights above Tali and the Cythonians at the exit were eyeing her suspiciously. Yet even if she got there, and even if they let her outside, how could she hope to escape so many guards without a spell of concealment?
Tali had no energy to think. She had to get to the top before the teeth around her ankle tore through to the bone. Never give up, her mother had taught her. If you begin something, you must complete it. And so she would, her own small monument to Iusia.
Her agony could get no worse, or so she had thought, but each flight proved harder than the one before. As she reached the fourth landing, her body a mass of spasming pain, the first of the slaves were on their way down again. By the sixth landing, even the tail-enders were descending. Tali wanted to lie down and die. Only will drove her on.
At the exit, a hard-faced Cythonian who might have been Orlyk’s brother was uncoiling a yard-long, bright yellow chuck-lash, a punishment far worse than the little ones Orlyk used in the grottoes. Yellow chuck-lashes burst against the skin like miniature bombasts.
A second guard raised a piece of metal in the shape of a musician’s triangle, then struck it with a rod. The triangle chimed, an answering ting came from Tali’s bracelet and, with a clacketty-scutter-clack, it drove a series of needle-sharp teeth into the bone of her ankle.
The pain was a shriek from a torture chamber. She stumbled, nearly fell, and trying to stand upright again was like lifting a mountain. It felt as if the sunstone itself was resisting her. She could not pretend to be Lifka now — Tali could no longer remember the way her double spoke. Was it her lower lip that gaped, or the upper?
The last of the slaves reached the blackened floor of the shaft and went out through the archway for their next load. The teeth in her ankle withdrew, though only so they could bite deeper next time. At the top, three more guards came in from outside to join the watching pair. The guard with the triangle raised it and Tali braced herself for more pain.
She staggered across another landing and kept going; if she stopped for a second she would never start again. Fantasies ran through her mind — the slaves’ bathing chamber and cool water flowing over her overheated body; pressing her face against the green, bubbly ice in the cool rooms. Her stomach was cramping, her knees vibrating like a fiddler’s bow, her ankle throbbing with every shuddery vibration of the bracelet.
Then, as she glanced down, a tiny, skin-and-bone figure lurched through the archway. Mimoy had come. Tali’s heart jumped and she felt a surge of hope, but it swiftly faded. The old woman looked exhausted. She was leaning on a knob-headed cane, swaying from side to side, and her twisted feet left bloody prints on the floor.
Tali’s heart went out to the old woman, who must be in agony on those ruined feet. But what could Mimoy do? If she used magery under the eyes of the guards they would take her head at once.
‘Move, slave!’ shouted the guard with the yellow chuck-lash.
Tali tried to go on but her thigh muscles cramped. She should not have stopped.
‘I — can’t — ’
The guard with the triangle began to come down, one step at a time, never taking his eyes off her, the rod held high above his head as if to strike a mighty blow. The teeth of the ankle bracelet pricked into her, quivering. Tali imagined the next snap shearing right through her ankle, the teeth meeting in the middle, but she had nothing left.
With the cane, Mimoy gave a feeble wave. Not even the most suspicious Cythonian would have taken it for magery, yet Tali felt the cramps ease, a little strength trickle into her legs, then the teeth in the ankle bracelet withdraw. She looked up and down, biting her lip. What did Mimoy want her to do? You’re taking me, she had said, but Tali could not go down for her, nor could Mimoy follo
w. Only sunstone carriers were allowed up the shaft, so how did she plan to get out?
Mimoy met Tali’s eyes and nodded, almost imperceptibly. Did that mean Tali was to continue up? She climbed the next flight, stronger now than she had been at the beginning, and the guard lowered his triangle.
A tiny bubble of optimism carried her on. She would climb to the exit, then haul her burden out to the racks where the stones were exposed to sunlight. And once there? Cold logic defeated every plan, every hope. Without magery, she could not escape the ever-watchful guards. Without magery, she would be driven down the shaft again, where Overseer Banj would be waiting with his blood-drinking blade.
But life was hope: once outside in Hightspall her gift might come. Or Mimoy might have a plan to help her find it. And Mimoy must know who had ordered her mother’s death. It was enough to keep Tali going.
She was two flights from the top when a big man entered the base of the shaft. Her vision was blurred from exhaustion and at first she thought it was one of Banj’s runners, though there was no tumult below, no shouts of, Stop her! He looked up, saw her desperate eyes on him and his ruined mouth cracked wide. Tinyhead licked the wall she had rested against, up and down, his bloodshot eyes rolling. Even from this distance the sound turned her stomach.
One word from him and the guards would stop her. The only way to escape him was to give herself up, though if she did the Cythonians would cut everything off.
It would be better to jump, yet jumping meant failure to punish her mother’s killers and breaking the oath sworn on Mia’s blood. Failure meant victory for her family’s enemy; it meant no warning for Hightspall about the coming war; it meant the Pale being slaughtered as soon as war began. It meant more than her own life.
Since she was going to die, was there a way to make her death meaningful, as her parents’ deaths had not been? Tali slumped against the wall, every breath hurting. Iusia’s killers were beyond her reach but she might be able to punish her betrayer.
