Oh, I know I’m not as handsome as some people, but I have power!’
Sighing, Sordiko Qualm cavorted away-but no, from behind it was more a saunter. Approaching was a cavort, leaving was a saunter. ‘Sordiko Saunter Qualm Cavort, she comes and goes but never quite leaves, my love of loves, my better love than that excuse for love I once thought was real love but let’s face it love it wasn’t, not like this love. Why, this love is the big kind, the swollen kind, the towering kind, the rutting gasping pumping exploding kind! Oh, I hurt myself.’
Mogora snorted. ‘You wouldn’t know real love if it bit you in the face.’
‘Keep that armpit away from me, woman!’
‘You’ve turned this temple into a madhouse, Iskaral Pust. You turn every temple you live in into a madhouse! So here we are, contemplating mutual murder, and what does your god want from us? Why, nothing! Nothing but waiting, always waiting! Bah, I’m going shopping!’
‘At last!’ Iskaral crowed.
‘And you’re coming with me, to carry my purchases.’
‘Not a chance. Use the mule.’
‘Stand up or I’ll have my way with you right here.’
‘In the holy vestry? Are you insane?’
‘Rutting blasphemy. Will Shadowthrone be pleased?’
‘Fine! Shopping, then. Only no leash this time.’
‘Then don’t get lost.’
‘I wasn’t lost, you water buffalo, I was escaping.’
‘I’d better get the leash again.’
‘And I’ll get my knife!’
Oh, how marriage got in the way of love! The bonds of mutual contempt drawn tight until the victims squeal, but is it in pain or pleasure? Is there a difference? But that is a question not to be asked of married folk, oh no.
And in the stables the mule winks at the horse and the horse feels breakfast twisting in her gut and the flies, well, they fly from one lump of dung to another, convinced that each is different from the last, fickle creatures that they are, and there is no wisdom among the fickle, only longing and frustration, and the buzz invites the next dubious conquest smelling so fragrant in the damp straw.
Buzz buzz.
Amidst masses of granite and feverish folds of bedrock veined with glittering streaks, the mining operation owned by Humble Measure was an enormous pit facing a cliff gouged with caves and tunnels. Situated equidistant between Darujhistan and Gredfallan Annexe and linked by solid raised roads, the mine and its town-sized settlement had a population of eight hundred. Indentured workers, slaves, prisoners, work chiefs, security guards, cooks, carpenters, potters, rope makers, clothes makers and menders, charcoal makers, cutters and nurses, butchers and bakers the enterprise seethed with activity. Smoke filled the air. Old women with bleeding hands clambered through the heaps of tailings collecting shreds of slag and low quality chunks of coal. Gulls and crows danced round these rag-clad, hunched figures.
Not a single tree was left standing anywhere within half a league of the mine. Down on a slope on the lakeside was a humped cemetery in which sat a few hundred shallow graves. The water just offshore was lifeless and stained red, with a muddy bottom bright orange in colour.
Scented cloth held to his face, Gorlas Vidikas observed the operation which he now managed, although perhaps “managed” was the wrong word. The day to day necessities were the responsibility of the camp workmaster, a scarred and pock-faced man in his fifties with decades-old scraps of raw metal still embedded in his hands. He hacked out a cough after every ten words or so, and spat thick yellow mucus down between his bronze-capped boots.
‘The young ’uns go the fastest, of course.’ Cough, spit. ‘Our moles or so we call ’em, since they can squeeze inta cracks no grown-up can get through,’ cough, spit, ‘and this way if there’s bad air it’s none of our stronger workers get killed.’ Cough… ‘We was havin’ trouble gettin’ enough young ’uns for a time there, until we started buyin’
’em from the poorer fam’lies both in and outa the city-they got too many runts t’feed, ye see? An’ we got special rules for the young ’uns-nobody gets their hands on ’em, if you know what I mean.
‘From them it goes on up. A miner lasts maybe five years, barring falls and the like. When they get too sick we move ’em outa the tunnels, make ’em shift captains. A few might get old enough for foreman-I was one of them, ye see. Got my hands dirty as a lad and ’ere I am and if that’s not freedom I don’t know what is, hey?’
This workmaster, Gorlas Vidikas silently predicted, would be dead inside three years. ‘Any trouble with the prisoners?’ he asked.
‘Nah, most don’t live long enough to cause trouble. We make ’em work the deadlier veins. It’s the arsenic what kills ’em, mostly-we’re pullin’ gold out too, you know. Profit’s gone up three thousand per cent in the past year. E’en my share I’m looking at maybe buying a small estate.’
Gorlas glanced across at this odious creature. ‘You married?’
Cough, spit, ‘Not yet,’ and he grinned, ‘but you know what a rich man can buy, hey?’
‘As part of what I am sure will be an exceptional relationship,’ Gorlas said, where I profit from your work, ‘I am prepared to finance you on such an estate. A modest down payment on your part, at low interest…’
‘Really? Why, noble sir, that would be fine. Yessy, very fine. We can do that all right.’
And when you kick off with no heirs I acquire yet another property in the Estate District. ‘It is my pleasure,’ he said with a smile. ‘Those of us who have done well in our lives need to help each other whenever we can.’’My thoughts too, ‘bout all that. My thoughts exactly.’
Smoke and stenches, voices ringing through dust, oxen lowing as they strained, with overloaded wagons. Gorlas Vidikas and the dying workmaster looked down on the scene, feeling very pleased with themselves.
Harllo squirmed his way out from the fissure, the hand holding the candle stretched out in front of him, and felt a calloused grip wrap round his narrow wrist. The candle was taken and then Bainisk was pulling Harllo out, surprisingly tender but that was Bainisk, a wise veteran all of sixteen years old, half his face a streak of shiny scar tissue through which peered the glittering blue of his eyes-both of which had miraculously escaped damage. He was grinning now as he helped Harllo on to his feet.
‘Well, Mole?’
‘Iron, raw and cold and wide across as three of my hands laid flat.’
‘The air?’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
Laughing, Bainisk slapped him on the back. ‘You’ve earned the afternoon. Back to Chuffs you go.’
Harllo frowned. ‘Please, can’t I stay on here?’
‘Venaz giving you more trouble?’
‘Bullies don’t like me,’ Harllo said.
‘That’s ’cause you’re smart. Now listen, I warned him off once already and once is all the warning I give and he knows that so he won’t be bothering you. We need our moles happy and in one piece. It’s a camp law. I’m in charge of Chuffs, right?’
Harllo nodded. ‘Only you won’t be there, will you? Not this afternoon.’
‘Venaz is in the kitchen today. It’ll be all right.’
Nodding, Harllo collected his small sack of gear, which was a little heavier than usual, and set out for upside. He liked the tunnels, at least when the air wasn’t foul and burning his throat. Surrounded by so much solid stone made him feel safe, protected, and he loved most those narrowest of cracks that only he could get through-or the few others like him, still fit with no broken bones and still small enough. He’d only cracked one finger so far and that was on his right hand which he used to hold the candle and not much else. He could pull himself along with his left, his half-naked body slick with sweat despite the damp stone and the trickles of icy water.
Exploring places no one had ever seen before. Or dragging the thick snaking hoses down into the icy pools then calling out for the men on the pumps to get started, and in the candle’s fitful flickering light he’d watch the water level descend and see, sometimes, the strange growths on the stone, and in the crevices the tiny blind fish that-if he could reach-he slid into his mouth and chewed and swallowed, so taking something of this underworld into himself, and, just like those fish, at times he didn’t even need his eyes, only his probing fingers, thetaste and smell of the air and stone, the echoes of water droplets and the click-click of the white roaches skittering away.
