Ian Irvine - Vengeance

‘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.

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, deadly skritters ?

No one understood the Cythonians, or had any idea what they really wanted, but one thing was clear. They were more clever than anyone imagined, they were working to a plan, and it was rapidly coming to a head.

The dinner gong sounded. Tali slipped out, then noticed a tumble of stone down near the workface, evidently fallen from the tunnel wall in the collapse she had heard earlier. Dim light touched one corner of the pile, which was curious, since the miners had taken their lanterns. After checking behind her, she walked down. The rock fall had opened a small, triangular hole into a narrow service passage, and if she could wriggle through, she might be able to bypass the guard post around the corner. Had the miners not been called away they would have blocked the hole.

Bypassing the guard post did not help. Tali had no way to get through any of the heavily guarded exits from Cython. She turned back.

The tunnel was empty save for a ragged fellow up ahead, kneeling in one of the effluxor sumps. He was so thin that Tali first took him for a slave, until he turned and she saw the empty, blackened sockets and the seeing eye tattooed in the middle of his forehead. It was Mad Wil, also called Wil the Sump because he spent all his days doing slaves’ work, cleaning the sumps until they shone.

Slaves never spoke to their masters unless answering a question, but Wil the Sump was not even master of himself. Tali nodded to him as she approached on silent feet, before remembering that he could not see her. But as she passed, he shot upright in a surge of grey water. His eye sockets were fixed on her and his toothless mouth was gaping.

‘You the one . You the one. ’

He scrambled out, reaching towards her with cracked hands that were too big for his puny body. Tali recoiled, for his nasal septum had been eaten away, leaving him with one cavernous, red-rimmed nostril.

‘Not Wil’s fault,’ he wailed. ‘Wil didn’t put them to death. Wil had to protect the story.’ He choked. ‘Ady made him tell. Poor Wil couldn’t help it.’

He turned aside, surreptitiously drawing a small metal tube from inside his coat and uncapping it, and Tali caught a sickly sweet, oily odour. He pressed the tube to his ragged nostril and took a gasping breath. Blood trickled down his upper lip.

She hurried away, but as she reached the corner his voice soared — ‘They all died for you.’

What was he talking about? Her mother and her ancestors? But Wil hadn’t been there when her mother died, and he wasn’t old enough to have seen any of the earlier deaths. He’d been mad since an accident that had taken his eyes a dozen years ago, and maybe he said that to everyone, but it was one disturbing incident too many.

The entrance of the subsistery was carved to resemble the mouth of a grinning eel, one of the main foods in Cython. Tali had thought of it as a rare Cythonian joke, though today it felt like a threat.

Inside, the subsistery was lit in ghostly yellow by dozens of suspended circular plates encrusted with luminous fungi. The wall dioramas were views of the Seethings above Cython — an eerily beautiful wasteland of scalded soil, sinkholes of bubbling mud and glass-clear pools surrounded by concentric bands of red, orange and yellow salts. The dioramas seemed intended to teach another lesson — trying to escape led only to death.