Vengeance

stand up under the weight. No way could she carry the sunstone a thousand steps to the surface.

The second eunuch was looking 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 follow. Only sunstone carriers were allowed up the shaft, so how did she plan to get out?