Vengeance

‘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.

‘The mine is a punishment. Men are sent there to die. They don’t get lotions.’

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,