She swore under her breath, thrilled by discomfiting fear. As she bent to shovel at the tiny hills of debris heaped along the floor, he probed the ceiling for a breach. A grain spat onto her neck, followed by a hissing spill that got under her tunic, crawling along her spine.
'Seems like nothing,' he said, 'just a bit of loose-'
The sound crackled like a body turning over on a bed of pebbles. Mas grabbed at her.
'Move!'
She bent for the buckets, but he yanked harder as, in a downpour, loose material rained down. She ran with head bent under the low ceiling. A soft rumble expanded behind her and a cloud of dust nipped at her heels.
And faded.
Mas jogged on a ways farther, then halted to spit debris out of his mouth.
'Shouldn't we keep moving?'
'Neh, this is well packed, we dug this section ourselves if you recall.'
Her neck was clammy, and her hands were hot. 'I'll like to get out.'
'Cursed fools were supposed to reinforce that area. Don't know what they're thinking not to have done it yet.'
'Can we get out?' She was starting to shake.
'Eh, sure.' As they walked mouth-ward, he chatted on like nothing had happened. 'Listen, what I said before? About starting up my own house? I'll need a wife. You interested?'
She licked grit from her lips and thought about slapping him upside the back of the head. She was strong enough that it would really hurt him. 'Eh, that's a kindness, Mas. I'm not interested, thanks.'
'Well, then, what with there being no Devouring temple to visit, if you had a thought about a bit of sharing?'
Maybe a month's hard labor had mellowed her. Maybe it was knowing he had likely saved her life back there. Maybe it was just that the stone-lined mouth loomed before them, sun bright beyond
the dim confines of the underground conduit down which water would someday flow to irrigate fields. As they ducked out through the stone-framed mouth of the conduit and blinked in the hard sunlight, she managed a polite reply.
T appreciate you asking, but I don't want to get in trouble with the Qin.'
Mas scratched dust from his scant beard. He looked across the flat depression that would become a reservoir and toward the higher practice ground where four black-clad Qin soldiers were forming up the trainees — men just off shift — into ranks. 'Neh, I suppose I don't neither. They're hard, that's for sure. If fair. They don't overcharge us for sleeping space and food, like some masters do. Water's steep, though.'
She tried in vain to slap dust off her tunic and kilted-up trousers, but she was coated in the sandy grit that passed for soil in these parts. Mas led her over to the supervisor's pavilion, and they got a hearing from the overseer, O'eki. The big man — an outlander — listened to Mas's detailed recounting with the resignation of a man who hears this every day.
'Hu! You got off easy. Maybe you'd like to set the reinforcement yourself, Mas. You're the best at it.'
'If I get the same hazard pay as for digging the face.'
'Come back at twilight. I'll let you know then.'
They got into line by the supervisor's pavilion, waiting to turn in their mattock and spade. The four men ahead of them, coming off their own shift change, took sword-length wooden batons in exchange and trotted out to the formation. She walked away toward the canvas barracks. Mas kept pace beside her until they reached the canvas screens that set off the entrance to the women's barracks.
'If you're sure…' He was an ordinary fellow, without any least distinguishing characteristics except that, like her, he'd had some pressing reason to sell his labor to the Qin. He'd never said what it was, but then again, neither had she. 'I just meant to say-'
'Sorry!'
He winced, so she knew she'd snapped.
'I'm just shaking after that,' she added.
'Eh, truly, the murderer does get to people that way'
'And I'm tired.' And I'll never be interested in you, or maybe in any man.
He sighed.
'Truth is, Mas,' she added, for once thinking to spare him a bit of misery, 'I really don't care to test the Qin's patience. You know how they are, all prim and dainty.'
'Surely I do. Strange notions, they've got. Men sleep in one barracks tent and women in another, and once curfew falls, no mixing. Those who disobey are sent home, or whipped. Eiya! No use ruining your hopes for buying out your debt and gathering a nest egg of coin, just for an afternoon's pleasure.'
She managed a smile, however insincere. Once safe within the women's area, she measured out her ration of wash water, which was only enough to wash her face and hands and even then not get off the grime. Coated with grit, she lay down on the blanket assigned to her, and she thought not of her husband, that kind and patient man who had never treated her with anything except gentle forbearance, but of the hierodule they had briefly traveled with. So be it. She was here, slaving in the Barrens, and no doubt that cursed interfering reeve had captured Zubaidit and taken her back to Olossi to serve out her own sentence for theft and debt-breaking. They'd not meet again. That's just how it was. She could never expect anything in life but leavings and scraps.
She hoped that Avisha and the children were doing well, but even that was out of her hands. After leaving Argent Hall, she had eked out a living doing day labor. In the meantime she had asked around at the Qin compound until she'd found out that a girl matching Avisha's description had been taken in to the household of the captain's wife. So at least they were being cared for. She'd heard a rumor that the captain's wife had come to live here in the Barrens, in the settlement, but since debt slaves remained in their camp, she'd never seen her. Even if it were true, what was the point of seeing Avisha and the children? She could do nothing for them, and no doubt it would upset them, as it had that day when Avisha had seen her in the labour gang in Olossi.
The hells! She could not rest, although she was weary to the bone and still feeling in her skin the way the cloud of soil and debris had raced alter her like a monstrous lilu with mouth gaped wide to
devour her. Digging was hard, dangerous work. Men like Mas called the shaft and conduit 'the murderer', because men did die to bring water to barren settlements.
But the hard, dangerous work meant she didn't have to think about what she did not have, what she could not do, and how those cursed reeves had tried to trick her into enslaving herself to their cursed halls. If she was going to walk into debt slavery, at least she had done it of her own choice, with her eyes open to the consequences.
But which would be worse? Suffocating under a mass of dirt as it forced its way down your throat and nostrils? Or having your head ripped off by a bad-tempered eagle?
She wiped yet more dust from her brow. Or maybe she was just smearing it together with sweat to make herself a mottled complexion. Through a gap in the canvas, she watched the sun settle westward toward hazy peaks. Stamps and shouts from the practice ground marked the pace of the training. Men who showed promise would be allowed to join the Qin militia, an elite group being trained in the strictest and most arduous standard imaginable, and despite or perhaps because of this, young men did put in second shifts for the chance to be as tough as the sauntering Qin soldiers.
Nearby, women worked with cheerful banter in the kitchens. A pair of mules came in with fresh laundry from the washing house a couple of mey inland, closer to a good water source, where other female debt slaves worked. The shaded ground beneath the canvas grew stuffy. She dozed off.
As she often did these days after working underground, she dreamed of flying. The land below her dangling feet is seen as hollows and rises, a patchwork of color and texture like a rumpled blanket but breathtaking in each distinct detail. A tiny deer springs across a clearing, followed by a fawn. A man in a red cap crouches alone by a campfire. A wagon drawn by droving beasts glides down a road, accompanied by a trio of walking men more like ants than human beings. Black thunderclouds pile up over mountains, building strength, and after lightning flashes, a blue burst of light bolts into existence, winks coquettishly, and vanishes.
Thunder boomed, waking her. Shouts woke the alarm bell, rung
thrice. Running footsteps scraped on the ground outside. She scrambled to the entrance of the women's compound, where debt slaves gathered.
