“Find the female,” 568 barked at the slaves, searching through the human flesh pile. “Tall. Blue eyes. Dark hair. Keep looking.”
Zens was looking for Ma. Did he really suspect that she was still alive? Or was he just eliminating her as the cause of the missing things?
Tomaaz turned over a woman with dark hair. Her face was bruised, marred by viscous claw marks. She had blue eyes. He waved an arm and 568 came over, dragging a small tharuk with him.
“Is that the one?” 568 snapped at the small tharuk.
The beast shook its head. “Our one is taller.”
It was right; Ma was taller. Tomaaz turned back to his sickening task, sifting through littlings, men and women. All these lives ending here, in Death Valley. It was hopeless, daunting.
They had to fight back. Free slaves. End the terror caused by Zens.
It was nearly evening. Soon they’d stop for gruel. He smothered a cynical snort, not daring to let the tharuks notice. He’d never thought he’d ever look forward to that sloppy weevil-infested muck. But after he’d eaten, he could feed the beast and escape with Maazini, Ma and the boy, to meet Pa and Handel.
Way before mealtime arrived, 568 ordered them back to the latrines. Tomaaz had never been so glad to shovel excrement.
Closing In
Tomaaz didn’t dare strain the weevils or cockroaches out of his evening gruel. Hundreds of tharuk guards were scrutinizing the slaves’ movements, hovering over them like giant vultures. Burnt Face had been staring at him all afternoon, red eyes slitted in concentration, as if their earlier trip to Maazini had cheated him of a chance to have fun.
Tomaaz kept his eyes hooded and his face slack. The tips of all his fingernails were now pink, so he kept them curved around the base of his bowl as he drank his soup from the rim. Something wriggled in his mouth. A weevil? A roach? Red eyes bored into him. He fought his gag reflex, swallowing the squirming insect.
Shards, he hated this place.
He washed the insect down with another gulp of gruel and shambled to the dish barrel to dump his bowl. Then he sat, away from Burnt Face’s gaze, to await his next orders. It wasn’t long until sunset.
He’d be leaving all these people behind, condemning them to this horror. Why did Zens have slaves? The latrines crews weren’t important; they were only servicing the latrines for the hundreds of slaves that disappeared into those crevasses in the hillsides. Tomaaz had never seen what came out of the earth, and there was no way he’d find out now. He was leaving.
A scream cut through Tomaaz’s thoughts. Tharuks were still observing them, so he tightened his muscles against the urge to look. But it got harder to act numlocked when another scream was followed by grunts of pain and cries. More than one person was being hurt.
Slowly, as the slaves around him shifted, Tomaaz adjusted his position to see.
Burnt Face and a few other tharuks were kicking slaves—not littlings or the elderly, but able-bodied men and women. Each time a tharuk kicked a slave in the gut, their fellow guards observed the slaves’ reactions.
Tomaaz sucked in his breath. They were testing to see if everyone was numlocked. If they didn’t find anyone, they’d probably start on the littlings. This was his fault. If he hadn’t stolen those things, the tharuks wouldn’t have known he was here.
“Maazini, they’re hurting the slaves to find me. I should give myself up.”
“No!” Maazini roared in his head. “Stand strong. We’ll come back and hunt down Zens and free the slaves. Your ma, the boy and I need you.”
Burnt Face was closer now, kicking a man, four slaves over. Through hooded eyes, Tomaaz watched the slave moan and curl in on himself. The man hadn’t tensed as the tharuk had neared, and he hadn’t made any move to defend himself. Acting numlocked was going to be harder than he’d thought.
Burnt Face skipped a littling and kicked a woman in the stomach. She sprawled on the ground, whimpering, then curled up, holding her middle. The tharuk’s stench wafted over Tomaaz as it swung its boot at Tomaaz’s neighbor.
It turned to him.
Tomaaz didn’t dare look up. Relax, relax, relax.
Burnt Face’s boot connected with his gut in an excruciating thud. Pain bloomed through his middle. He flew backward, sprawling on the ground. He gasped for air, letting out a moan, and curled up. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe. Gods, his stomach hurt.
“Tomaaz!” Maazini mind-melded, his concern spiking through Tomaaz’s head.
Two tharuks loomed over him. Yanking him to his feet, they held him up. He tried to hunch over to ease the pain, but they refused to let him, pulling him by the shoulders until he was dangling from their sharp claws, his feet hanging in the air. “Maazini, they know. They’ve found me.”
“Stay calm,” Maazini melded.
“You,” Burnt Face bellowed, “feed the beast.”
The tharuk followed Tomaaz as he stumbled toward the tool pile, clutching his stomach with one hand, and picked up his shovel.
“Fall in,” Burnt Face called, gesturing to other tharuks, who formed a wall behind Tomaaz. Wiry, the tracker, was among them.
His pain receded to a dull ache as they marched him along the valley, prodding him with their claws and breathing their foul stench over him. “Maazini, coming now, with five tharuks. Tell Ma.”
“We’re prepared.” There was malice in Maazini’s tone.
He hefted rats off the rat pile. Maybe with a dragon on his side he had a chance.
But Ma was weak, the boy too, and Maazini wasn’t in the
