Daniel Cohen - Coldmarch

‘What?’ Cam asked, putting the Wisp back down. ‘Is that offensive to touch?’

Shilah looked at me, her eyes resolute. ‘The Vicaress can read, too. And I guarantee she knows the difference between alder and blood. We need to keep moving.’

I nodded, but a part of me wanted to read every single prayer down here, and touch every gift, thinking about the Jadans who might have left them behind. They’d challenged the Khat’s Gospels to try their luck in this Coldmarch. They must have believed our people were more than dirt, that we weren’t supposed to be slaves.

Even without a Coldmaker, they had taken a leap.

If only they could see the machine in my arms.

‘You’re right,’ I said, my hand trembling as I pressed it against my machine. The metal was cool to the touch, even after all that time under Sun.

Shilah quickly led us through the decorated chamber, which at the end funnelled into another small space. Before we pushed into the mouth of the new tunnel, Shilah stopped and moved her head from side to side. If possible she drew her back even straighter, whipping her braid around so it was out of her face. The walls were closer near the exit, and two tallies of names had been etched on either side.

‘Lost,’ I read on top of the left wall.

‘Saved,’ Shilah said, pointing to the right.

The ‘saved’ side had considerably fewer names than the ‘lost’ side – which had hundreds, if not thousands, of names carved in, spanning floor to ceiling. I let my eyes scan the rows top to bottom, feeling more and more dismayed the closer to the ground I got, even spotting a few ‘Micahs’ along the way. Had all these Jadans really been killed in the name of freedom?

And then I reached the final name on the wall.

It looked entirely fresher than the rest, scraps of clay sprinkled on the floor underneath. It must have been why Mama Jana had so much earth trapped under her cracked fingernails.

She’d scratched his name in by hand.

Abb .

Cam bent over and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, Spout.’

I swallowed hard, my knees shaking as I crouched.

It’s not that I didn’t know he was gone, but here was the first physical proof. Not just a vision, or the Vicaress’s words that could have turned out to be a lie. Here was the name of my father, the best slave I’d ever known.

Emotions tried to flood in, but I had no capacity to deal with them right now, so I swallowed them back.

It wasn’t even that hard.

‘Drop the bucket,’ I said casually under my breath, opening the lips of my bag and showing him the invention. ‘All because of you.’

‘Hmm?’ Cam asked.

I put the Coldmaker on the ground, and, instead of grabbing one of the Abbs already tucked into the inside pocket, I flipped the machine on.

The air in the cave quivered as my invention went to work, a cool breath drawn from the entire tunnel. Wind whipped across the shrines, the temperature changing in the room. Why the machine worked was a mystery I intended to examine, but at least for now I had a general idea. The vials were opened as the gears turned. A few tears fell on the Frost first, which sat in its Cold Charge bath. This caused the initial reaction. Then a drop of my Jadan blood was let out at the catch-point as a starter material, where the gold gathered and bundled to form an Abb.

From a strictly inventive standpoint, the procedure was simple and straightforward, nothing other than a natural response.

Cause and effect. Simple. Emotionless.

As the new Abb came to life, I shut off the machine and plucked up the golden bead. A crisp scratching came from behind me, so I spun around and found Shilah with a long blade in her hand. It was folded steel, the silver handle ornate as they came. She was doing something to the bottom of the ‘saved’ wall. From my vantage it looked almost as if she was crossing a name out.

‘What are you doing?’ Cam asked.

Shilah finished and pressed her back to the place she’d marred, hiding the evidence. ‘Let’s keep moving.’

‘Can I borrow that?’ I asked, pointing to the blade. I was actually glad of Shilah’s thievery. Mama Jana had a decent collection of blades behind the counter, and we would need it more than the shopkeeper did.

Although perhaps not if the hounds had found her.

Shilah tossed the blade at my feet. I gently prised a nook out of the second ‘b’ in Abb’s name, big enough so as to make my own kind of shrine. I stuffed the fresh, golden Abb in the space, snug and secure, and then closed my eyes, offering a prayer I was sure was not the first of its kind to echo across these walls.

‘Let’s go,’ Shilah said, this time gently. ‘We don’t know how long this next stretch of tunnel is going to be.’

‘One more thing,’ I said.

I picked an empty spot on the wall and carved in a small feather.

We were stuck underground for much longer than expected.

Whoever had built this part of the Coldmarch had used the natural cracks in the land for a foundation, presumably to decrease the amount of actual digging that needed to be done. Since the Builders had used the existing spaces already waiting underground, the way through ended up being complex and disorientating. The compass told me we were zig-zagging back and forth beneath the city, quite often straying from North. Some of the natural cracks in the earth were huge, the size of Cry Temples, with sporadic holes that plunged downwards into a forever sort of darkness. Often in the distance we heard the sounds of rushing water, leaving me to wonder how close we were to the River Singe. We made sure to follow the red alder line painted at our feet so as not to get lost or stray off the designated path. In other sections the walls became incredibly congested, scarred with hundreds of scratches. I imagined the marks were from bodies and supplies trying to squeeze through.

We had no way to tell time in the darkness, but I imagined it was a few days. We stopped to sleep twice, both times finding sanctuary off the path in case the Vicaress had found her way down here. We only intended to rest for a few hours, just to gather our strength, although it was hard to judge how long we slept, since we had to extinguish the lamp each time to conserve fuel. Shilah and I slept with our bodies pressed together, our arms linked, belts looped together. This was both for warmth, but also for safety, in case something foul tried to snatch one of us away in the dead of night. Shilah thought I was being paranoid, but she was the one who’d suggested the knotted belts. I offered to have Cam sleep on my other side, tied to us, but he kept declining, insisting on staying awake and keeping guard. I’d told him this was unnecessary, since he wouldn’t be able to see, but he wouldn’t listen, keeping at the edges of whatever nook in which we took refuge, constantly vigilant.

By the third leg of the trip his eyes were as red as the alder line.

He also refused to eat any more of the figs. They didn’t last long anyway.

Not much was said as we made the journey. There was no reason for the silence, but I had a feeling Cam and Shilah were nervous for the same unsaid reason. None of us wanted to be the one to startle something ancient living down here in the dark. So far there had been no red eyes or grinding of unseen fangs, but anything was possible so far beneath the sands of Paphos. The world was different down here, cool and dark, and apart from the threat of Hookmen and Firegogs, it was a fitting start towards paradise. There was no Sun to bake us dry, no taskmasters waiting to scar our backs, no Nobles using our bodies for their own gain. For the Jadans who took their chances on the March, it would have been their first taste of peace.