Emily Rodda - The Silver Door

Sonia had fared better than Four-Eyes who, after being given another whiff of myrmon, had been stuffed into a sack and now lay hidden behind his captors. But this was only because Bird wanted Sonia under her hand, in case Rye was at the last moment tempted to betray them.

The light of the Diggings was glaring now. The corner of the fence was very near. Not far past it, a pair of tall mesh gates flanked by large, white-painted marker stones faced the track. There was a notice on one of the gates, but Rye could not make out what it said.

Trying to calm himself, he looked down at the note in his hand and read it for what must have been the twentieth time.

‘Itch added what was needed,’ Bird had said, pointing a stubby finger at the last line. ‘He’s an artist, and good at copying. The forgery isn’t perfect—we couldn’t quite match the ink—but it should do.’

Rye had frowned in confusion. ‘But this says nothing about releasing—’

‘That doesn’t matter. The only things that matter are the paper and the signature. At this time of night there’ll be no one in authority at the Diggings who can read. The guards can recognise numbers, but that’s all.’

‘Who is Brand? Is he the—?’

‘Don’t pretend ignorance, Spy!’ Bird had hissed. ‘The time for foolery is long past. Now, do you remember what you have to say?’

Rye did. He had repeated it so often that it was burned into his brain. But Bird would give him no peace until he had repeated it one more time.

‘They’ve seen us,’ Bean muttered from the driver’s seat. ‘Be ready!’

Jerking his head up, Rye saw that the gates were being dragged open by a grey-uniformed guard. The wagon chugged on, out of the dimness of the Scour into a sea of light.

‘Steady!’ Rye heard Bird hiss as the corner of the fence loomed large beside them.

Bean’s heavy face did not flicker. His left hand moved over the panel of levers and buttons in front of him. The red pointer on the dial began to crawl backwards. The wagon slowed. Bean swung the wheel hard to the right.

Roaring and creaking, the vehicle left the track, trundling between the white marker stones. It rolled through the gateway and stopped with a long hiss of steam.

The gates swung shut behind it. And from his high seat Rye looked down on the nightmare that was the Diggings.

There were people everywhere—people and their leaping shadows.

Broad pits, their sides studded with tunnels, teemed with labouring figures. The shortest of the slaves hammered and dug in the tunnels, which were all brilliantly lit by some means Rye could not see. Taller slaves hauled buckets of earth and broken rock out of the pits, tipping the spoil into carts drawn by grunting beasts that looked like miniature, hornless bloodhogs. Other slaves hauled at the neck chains of hogs with filled carts, urging them towards a waste pile that towered over a cluster of sagging, flat-roofed huts.

Guards in grey patrolled the pits and the dusty ground above, cracking whips, bellowing commands, lashing out at any slave who fell or stopped work for an instant. Closer to the gate, off-duty guards sprawled around a great bed of glowing coals set on a slab of blackened stone. A huge chunk of meat turned on a spit above the fire, but the guards seemed to have lost interest in it. They were all looking eagerly at the wagon.

‘Hoy, trader!’ a coarse voice shouted. ‘You’re late!’

The flap beside the driver’s seat was pulled aside and the guard who had opened the gates peered in.

Rye took one look at the brutish face with its flat, cold eyes and felt a creeping horror. For an instant the urge to cringe back and cross his fingers and his wrists was almost irresistible.

Nothing Bird said had prepared him for this. The man walked and talked like a human. He even looked like a human. But there was nothing human behind those flat grey eyes. The guard was … empty. A being without a soul.

Ignoring Bean, the guard stared at Rye, then glanced around the wagon. His jaw dropped as he saw that the storage space was empty except for a few shadowy figures huddled against one wall.

‘Where’s Four-Eyes?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s all the food?’

‘The Master needed the trader’s wagon to move slaves to a new source of jell,’ said Rye in the cold, impatient voice Bird had told him to use. ‘I have picked up some slaves already. The other twenty are to come from here.’

‘What?’ the guard exclaimed. ‘But we can’t spare that many! We’ll have trouble making this week’s jell quota as it is!’

‘That cannot be helped!’ Rye snapped. He leaned across Bean and thrust the grey paper into the guard’s hand. ‘As you see, you are to supply the twenty mine rats who work in Tunnel 12, and sleep in Hut 16. Fetch them from wherever they are, and be quick about it.’

The guard stared blankly at the note, then turned towards the fire.

‘Hoy, Krop 1!’ he bawled.

A guard who had been sitting at his ease with his back to a withered tree stump stood up with a groan and began walking to the wagon. The first guard went to meet him, holding out the grey paper. As they came back, muttering together, Rye saw with a shock that they were identical. They had the same flat eyes, the same straight, almost lipless mouths, the same smooth, hairless skin that looked as if it would be cold to touch.

The guards both bent their heads over the note, their fingers pressing on the numbers in the last line.

Bird, Chub, Itch and Bean were absolutely silent, but the tension in the wagon was so thick that Rye felt his head might burst with the strain of it.

‘It looks all right, Krop 4,’ the second guard said grudgingly.

‘Of course it is right!’ barked Rye. ‘Are you questioning the Master’s orders?’

‘No, sir,’ Krop 1 gabbled. ‘We were just—’

‘Then get the slaves! Make haste!’

The other guards had left the fire now, and were coming to see what was happening. There were eight of them, and a chill ran down Rye’s spine as he saw that they all looked exactly the same as the two already at the wagon.

‘Bring the mine rats from Tunnel 12,’ Krop 1 ordered, turning to the approaching group. ‘They’re wanted elsewhere.’

After that, there was nothing to do but wait. As the minutes ticked by with agonising slowness, Krop 1 and Krop 4 stood murmuring together by the wagon. Rye sat stiffly, staring straight ahead, pretending not to listen.

‘We’ll never make our week’s quota now,’ he heard Krop 1 mutter.

‘We wouldn’t have anyway,’ the other guard replied. ‘This area’s finished. Soon it’ll only be fit for Scour scum. The tunnels are caving in, and even up here the surface is sinking. It’s taking out all the jell that does it. They should leave some of it in the ground.’

‘We’ve told them that,’ said Krop 1. ‘But they never listen to us. They just—’

Suddenly he started, turned, and thrust his head through the open doorway of the wagon. Rye’s heart seemed to leap into his throat.

‘The jell scourings, sir!’ the guard said, pointing at the metal box. ‘Did you bring them, at least?’

Rye’s face felt frozen as he nodded. Bird had told him the guards would want the trader’s jell, but he had forgotten all about it.

He stood up and, awkwardly crouching, felt in the pocket of the stiff coat for the key he had been given. Trying not to fumble, he unlocked the padlock on the metal box and threw open the lid.

Inside was a large pottery crock, tightly corked. Rye struggled to lift it. It was extremely heavy.