They were in the sweltering toadstool grottoes where they worked twelve hours a day, every day of the month, every month of the year. At times the drifting spore clouds were thick enough to clog the eyes.
"Stupid spores," Tali lied. "They gunk everything up."
"You look terrible. Have a break; I"ll do this row for you."
"Thanks, Mia."
Tali had woken in the middle of the night feeling as if a stone heart was grinding against her skull with every beat. And with each beat, brilliant reds and yellows swirled madly in her inner eye, like beams trying to find the way out of a sealed lighthouse until, with a spike of pain, they burst forth and she collapsed into sleep.
When the work gong had dragged her into wakefulness this morning, the inside of her skull felt bruised. She desperately needed to think, to plan, but now the colours were back, spinning like clay on a potter"s wheel, and fits of irrational anger kept flaring. She had to restrain herself from smashing the toadstool trays against the bench.
He"s coming for me and there"s no way out. They"re going to cut a hole in my head, just like Mama. No way out, no way out!
Tali pressed her cheek against the wet wall and after a minute the colours faded, the headache died to a dull throb. Take deep breaths and stay calm. Don"t do anything silly. You"ve got time. He might not come for months, even years. Mama had been twenty-six, after all.
Her racing heartbeat steadied and Tali wiped her face. "I"m all right now."
"Be careful. The Cythonians are really agitated today."
"Why?"
"I don"t know. Keep your head down and don"t attract attention."
Tali managed a smile. "When did I ever do that?"
"I"m always getting you out of trouble." Shaking her head fondly, Mia turned away to her work.
The grottoes were a series of broad, low-ceilinged tunnels linked by arched doorways. Cages filled with fat-bellied fireflies provided a bluish light that barely illuminated the walls, which were sculpted to resemble a forest by moonlight a a humid glen whose every surface was covered in fungi, like the grottoes themselves. The air was so heavy with their mixed earthy, fishy, foetid and garlicky odours that it made Tali heave.
The floor shook, grinding the stone trays against the benches. It had been shaking all day. What was the enemy up to in the secret lower levels? Was that why they were so touchy?
"Tali, try to look like you"re working."
"Sorry."
Today"s job, one of the worst of her slave duties, was de-grubbing the harvest. Tiered stone benches running the length of each grotto were stacked with trays of edible toadstools and mushrooms, dozens of kinds, plus leathery cloud ear fungi and giant red puffb.a.l.l.s as big as Tali"s head. The puffb.a.l.l.s had to be cut and bagged carefully lest they gush clouds of stinging flame-spores everywhere. In the darkest corners, tiny toadstools sprouted in cl.u.s.ters like luminous white velvet, though Tali wasn"t fool enough to stroke them. They were delicious when properly cooked, but deadly to touch in their natural state.
Reaching between the brown toadstools in front of her, she found a red-and-yellow girr-grub by feel and crushed it, wincing as the sharp bristles p.r.i.c.ked her fingers. After dropping the muck into her compost bucket she rinsed her hands under a wall spring. Last year she had sucked a sore finger covered in girr slime and spent the next three days throwing up the lining of her stomach.
Mia was humming as she worked. At least she could still dream. Tali"s vow to hunt down her mother"s killers had never faltered, but in ten years she had learned nothing more about them and this morning"s revelation had extinguished all hope. This morning, her eighteenth birthday and coming-of-age day, Little Nan had given Tali the letter her father had written her mother only days before his own tragic death. The letter that made it clear Tali would be next to die.
Her hand clenched on the stone tray. "It"s not right!" she hissed.
"What?" said Mia.
"Our servitude! Living in terror every day of our lives. Sleeping on stone beds. Being flogged for a scowl or a sideways look. Torn apart from our loved ones-"
"Don"t say such things," Mia whispered. "What if the guards hear?"
Tali"s voice rose. "Worked to death in the heatstone mines, killed for no reason at all." The blood was pounding in her head. "We"ve got to throw off our chains and cast the enemy down."
"Shh!" Mia slapped her hand over Tali"s mouth. "They"ll condemn you to the acidulators."
Tali yanked the hand away. "If they try," she said recklessly, "I"ll smash-"
Mia shook her head and backed away, her eyes wide and frightened.
A ululating whistle sounded behind Tali and she sprang aside, too late. The chymical chuck-lash wrapped around her left shoulder and went off, crack-crack-crack.
She staggered several steps, clutching her blistered, b.l.o.o.d.y shoulder, and through a drift of brown smoke saw Orlyk, the bandy-legged guard, scowling at her. A fringe of chuck-lashes swung from Orlyk"s belt like red bootlaces and she was raising another, ready to throw. Most of the guards were decent enough, but Orlyk was an embittered brute and she had been in a foul temper all day. And if she"d actually heard what Tali had said- "Lazy, Pale swine," Orlyk grunted, her blue-tattooed throat rising and falling like a calling toad. "Come the day when Khirrikai leads us to take back our land and we don"t need your kind any more. Oh, soon come the day!"
Tali"s head gave another throb. She fantasised about tearing the chuck-lashes from Orlyk"s belt, driving her to the nearest effluxor with them and dumping her head-first into the filth.
"Tali!" Mia hissed.
Lower your eyes and say, "Yes. Master."
Tali shivered at the hatred in Orlyk"s bulging eyes, then managed to regain control and forced out the sickening words, "Thank you for correcting me, Master."
She bowed lower than necessary. One day, Orlyk, one day! Tali knew how to defend herself, for she had practised the bare-handed art with Nurse Bet every week since her mother"s murder, but raising a hand against a guard was fatal.
Orlyk snapped the tip of a chuck-lash at Tali"s left ear, crack-crack, grunted, "Work, slave," and headed after another victim.
The pain was like a chisel hammered through Tali"s ear. She lost sight for a few seconds, the colours in her head swirled and danced, then her returning sight revealed Orlyk"s broad back as she approached the archway. Scalding blood was dripping from Tali"s ear onto her bare shoulder, and blood-drenched memory roused such fury that she s.n.a.t.c.hed up a chunk of rock.
"Tali, no!" Mia hissed.
As the guard pa.s.sed the puffball trays, Tali hurled her rock twenty yards and struck a giant puffball at its base. It disgorged an orange torrent of flame-spores, but then the shockwave set off a hundred other puffb.a.l.l.s and she watched in horror as the guard disappeared behind churning spore clouds. When they settled, Orlyk was convulsing on the floor, choking, her face and throat swelling monstrously.
"Are you insane?" hissed Mia. "If she dies ..."
"I didn"t mean that to happen," Tali whispered.
"You never do."
"Sorry, Mia. I"m really sorry."
Mia ran down the far side of the bench, picked the rock out of the puffball tray and tossed it out of sight. Reaching up to the clangours beside the archway, she struck the square healer"s bell with the ring-rod. The bell"s chime was picked up by trumpet-mouthed bell-pipes running across the ceiling, and shortly Tali made out an echo from outside. Mia came back, glaring at her.
"I"m not taking it any longer," Tali said defensively. "If I have to die, I"m not going quietly."
"Leave me out of it," Mia snapped.
Shortly a lean, austere Cythonian, the red, linked-oval cheek tattoos of a healer standing out on his grey skin, ran in. "What happened?"
"Puffb.a.l.l.s went off spontaneously," Mia lied.
He inspected the tray of burst puffb.a.l.l.s and the thick layer of orange spores surrounding Orlyk, then stared at Tali. She kept working, watching him from the corner of an eye. Her cheeks grew hot.
"I tried really hard," Tali said under her breath once he had turned to Orlyk. "But when she hit me with the second chucklash-"
"I told you not to draw attention to yourself."
"Mama died because I didn"t act quickly enough, and I"m never-"
"Shh!" said Mia.
Several slaves appeared on the other side of the archway, pretending to work while looking in sideways.
"You!" called the healer to the nearest slave, a thin girl with stringy yellow hair and eyes that must have seen a nightmare. "Run to the spagyrium. Get a sachet of blast-balm and a large head bag, quick!" He handed her a rectangular healer"s token made from shiny tin.
"B-blast-balm and head bag, Master," she said, head dutifully lowered.
"Large head bag."
"Master!" She ran out, sweaty feet slap-slapping on the stone floor.
The healer dragged Orlyk away from the spore-covered area, dampened a cloth and began to clean the spores out of her eyes, mouth, ears and nose. Orlyk"s face was scarlet, the swollen skin shiny and balloon-taut. Clotted sounds emerged from her throat as her lungs struggled to draw air.
"Pray s"s all right," Mia said from the corner of her mouth. "If she dies-"
Tali could not meet her eyes. Why had she been so stupid?
The slave reappeared, panting, and handed the healer a clear bag made from the intestines of an elephant eel. The healer pulled it over Orlyk"s head, inflated it with a small bellows, pulled the string on a pillow-like sachet of blast-balm, inserted it inside the bag and held the bag closed around Orlyk"s tattooed neck while he counted to five.
A loud, wet flupp sounded, like gas bubbles bursting at the top of the squattery pits. Mustard-yellow vapour swirled inside the head bag, then it shrank tightly against Orlyk"s head. After a minute the healer peeled the bag off, thumped Orlyk in the chest and she took a gurgling breath. Red blisters protruded through the coating of yellow balm but the swelling was already going down.
As the healer and the slave girl carried Orlyk out to the Healery, her black eyes fixed on Tali and, with a convulsive snap of the wrist, Orlyk hurled another chuck-lash. Tali ducked, it soared over her head and struck Mia on her swollen belly, crack-crack-crack.
Stifling a cry, Mia pressed both hands to her wildly quivering belly.
Tali ran to her. "Are you all right?"
Mia nodded and took her hands away to reveal a red and white welt as long as a finger. "Only the tip caught me. Lucky."
"Lucky," said Tali, guilt churning in her. "Let me heal-"
"Someone"s coming." Mia began to squash girr-grubs as though it was her sole delight.
Tali did the same. A replacement guard came in, stared at her for several minutes, then went into the next grotto. Through the archway, a toothless slave was scattering compost onto trays of mauve, curly-tipped Sprite Caps. One cap could cure the worst toothache within minutes; three caps would cure life almost as quickly. It was not unknown for desperate slaves to take that way out.
"We got away with it."
Mia touched the welt on her belly and winced. She was paler than usual, and in evident pain. Her belly was churning, the muscles clenching and unclenching.
Any other slave would have sworn at Tali, or slapped her. Tali wished Mia would do the same. Anything would be better than this sickening shame. But Mia was too nice, too gentle. She reminded Tali of her mother.
"I"m really sorry, Mia. I just snapped."
"What is it with you? You"ve been acting strangely all day."
"You know what happened to Mama?"
"You"ve told me at least fifty times," said Mia. "You never stop talking about it."
Tali hadn"t realised. "Well, according to Father"s letter, Mama"s mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were also killed the same way, and now I"ve come of age I"m marked to be next. Every time someone looks at me, every time I see a stranger pa.s.s by, I think they"re the one. I can"t take it any more. I"ve got to-"
"Shh!" Mia jerked her head towards the archway.
Tali glanced at the old slave. "Suba"s no harm. She"s simple."
"I think she"s a kwissler." An informer.
Tali moved out of Suba"s sight and pressed her hand against the welt on Mia"s belly, beginning the charm Nurse Bet had taught her when she was little. Most Cythonians turned a blind eye to healing charms, since they weren"t real magery, though a vengeful guard might still chuck-lash you for using one.
Healing charms were all Tali could do. She had practised her mother"s gentle magery every night since her death, but it never worked. Tali"s own gift had only come a handful of times, always when she was furious, though it was neither gentle nor controllable. It exploded out of her, wreaking unintended ruin, then vanished for years. Was that because she was so afraid of it?
To save herself and beat the enemy her mama had spoken of, the one that had fluttered in her nightmares like a wrythen, Tali had to find her buried magery and learn to control it. She had to find it fast, but who could she ask?
Trust no one.
end.