Redoubt

by Mercedes Lackey

  :Now go back out.:

  He did, and waited, and to his intense relief, this time, nothing happened. But right after the relief came puzzlement. Why hadn’t it come back a second time? Shouldn’t it have reappeared when he did?

  He dropped back through the roof and went back down into the shop, where Nikolas and Charis were waiting in the box for him. Nikolas had blown out the lamp at the doorway, closed and locked the front door, and blown out the lamp in the front of the shop. The shop was officially closed for business. Charis was not wearing his Greens; he was dressed in a scruffy, nondescript sleeveless tunic and trews from among Nikolas’ disguises. His blond hair had been left alone; it wasn’t likely anyone down here would recognize him.

  “I got no feelings from it at all,” Charis said, before Mags could ask any questions. His normally stoic expression had been replaced by one of extreme puzzlement. “Nothing. No anger, not even interest.” He shook his head. “I can’t even properly describe it. It was detached, intelligent, yet incurious. Almost as if someone had set a watchdog, yet it was a watchdog trained only to watch, and not do anything about what it saw.”

  Nikolas nodded and ran his fingers through his hair. The shop was very quiet tonight, and Mags could hear the ticking of wood beetles chewing away at the beams, the skittering of a mouse over in the corner. He wondered if they ought to get a shop cat. “That was the same impression I got,” Nikolas agreed. “I . . . I don’t know what it is. Dallen and Rolan think it might be some sort of . . . not a ghost, but a sort of spirit they either can’t, or won’t describe. But they don’t think it’s harmful; they just think that for some reason it got curious about Mags, but not curious enough to follow him for very long. If they’re wrong, and it is a ghost, Caelen has a new theory based on his own research. He thinks it’s someone who hasn’t yet realized that he or she is dead, maybe a very young child, who is just watching things to see what happens.”

  Mags looked at his mentor dubiously. “Y’know, that ain’t makin’ me feel any better. If anythin’, that’s creepier.”

  “Well, Caelen says if that is the case, then this sort of ghost fades fairly quickly, and no, we don’t know why they do, he just says that they do. So this won’t last more than a moon or two more.”

  “A moon or two.” Mags sighed. “Well, I reckon I can put up with it for that long, I guess.” The thought of a dead child watching him rather made him want to crawl right out of his skin, but he couldn’t tell Nikolas that.

  Why was it so difficult to figure out what this thing was, anyway? He would have thought, with one of the most skilled Mindspeakers around and one of the best Healers, they’d at least have a guess.

  “If ye don’ mind, I druther not go over roofs tonight,” he said, finally. “One go-around of bein’ stared at is enough fer one night.”

  The Healer smiled. “I fully understand that, Mags,” he said. “I really do. I felt what you felt . . . and that made me very curious. If you don’t mind my asking, what is it that makes this so difficult for you?”

  Nikolas let them all out of the office, blew out the lantern after lighting a candle stub at it, locked the office door, and led them out the front door. Mags tried to puzzle out what the Healer had meant.

  Finally he gave up. “Don’t reckon I understand the question, sir,” he said respectfully.

  Nikolas coughed a little. “I told you that you need to be more direct with Mags, Charis,” the King’s Own said as he locked up the shop. “He is a very direct sort of fellow.”

  “An’ there’s a powerful lot that’s difficult fer me, sir,” Mags added ruefully. The three of them trudged down the street together, heads down, shoulders hunched, three men going home after a long and tiring day. The street was quite empty tonight; the only activity seemed to be in a few upper-story rooms and in the drink shops—and there was not much of that.

  “I mean, why does the prospect of a spirit frighten you,” Charis asked after a long moment.

  Mags couldn’t help himself. He shuddered.

  It took him a long time to answer. These were not things he cared to think about.

  “I was pretty much a mine-slavey from about the time Cole Pieters reckoned I could pile rocks into a cart an’ pull the cart outa the mine,” he said. “Now, reckon the kind of mine that’d be, an’ the kind of man that’d put a bare toddler down there t’work.” He paused to let the Healer contemplate that. “Even if he weren’t a cruel man, only a greedy one, it weren’t like he paid any attention t’makin’ things safe. Pretty much all’a kiddies doin’ the daytime diggin’ were just that. Kiddies. Kiddies gen’rally aren’t thinkin’ about bein’ safe. They don’t shore up behind ’em, or if they do, they don’t make sure of it. They ain’t got the knowing an’ the learning that tells ’em when a seam’s full’a cracks. They get real hungry, and they’re thinkin’ of their bellies an’ how many sparklies it’ll take t’ get a extra slice of bread, an’ they ain’t careful when they’re chippin’ stuff out, specially if it’s big.” He paused and let the Healer take all that in. “Reckon ye can see where that’s goin’, sir. Lots of cave-ins. Lots of people die. Would have been a lot more, ’cept the rock was pretty sound an’ didn’t need a lot of shorin’ up. But this’s what generally happened. If the whole roof comes down, it generally kills you on the spot, an’ yer lucky.”

  “Lucky!” Charis exclaimed, shocked.

  “Aye. Supervisor hears it, or else he don’t, but when he comes down yer way, he don’t hear you tappin’ no more, an’ he checks. Now, if where you was workin’ was a good vein, he’ll send somebody in there t’clear out.”

  Mags took a long, deep breath. “Now, if the rockfall didn’ kill ye dead, you’ve been a-lyin’ there for however long it took him to check. An’ if the shaft you been workin is blocked up now, well. Maybe they’ll get to you, an’ maybe they won’t, cause if it’s blocked up too bad, it’ll have t’ be a right good seam or vein t’ spend the time t’clear out. So yer lyin’ there, an’ maybe you don’t live. An’ if ye don’t, you’re lucky.”

  This time the Healer didn’t utter an exclamation, but Mags could tell he was about to explode with indignation. Of course he was. The very idea that someone young and presumably healthy was lucky to die was anathema to a Healer.

  “So say it’s too blocked up t’ get to ye fast. Now, remember, they ain’t tryin’ t’clear it t’ get to you. They’re clearin’ it to get to the stones. And say ye weren’t dead in the rockfall, an’ ye don’t die soon. Ye’re lyin’ there, in the dark. It’s getting harder an’ harder t’breathe. Ye mebbe got a lotta rock layin’ on ye. Yer bones is prolly broke.” He felt the Healer shrinking at the picture he was painting, as well he should. It was horrific, and one that Mags had pictured as his own fate in countless nightmares. Still did, actually, now and again. But he went on, though he was drenched in a cold sweat of fear, because he realized that he wanted, desperately, to have someone understand, at long last, understand gut- and bone-deep, the horrible, terror-filled life he and the others had endured, day after day, in that place. He had never spoken much about it, not even to Nikolas and Amily. He wasn’t sure why. But here at last was someone who would not only understand it but would feel it. He was a Healer, he was an Empath. He knew what broken bones and suffocation felt like; he’d endured them with his patients. He knew the agony of lacerated flesh and nerve. And he knew fear, the fear you felt when you finally accepted that you were going to die, be snuffed out, and be gone. As hideous as life might be, it was something they all clung to. And not one of them had a hope for anything afterward. Why should they? Such things were promised by men in fine clothing who came, looked past their protruding bones and frightened eyes, and told Cole Pieters what a good thing he was doing, caring for so many orphans. If they could be so mistaken about what was in front of their own eyes, how could anyone believe what they said about gods and he
avens and things after death that no one had ever seen?

  So Mags went on.

  “Like I said, they ain’t after you, they just wanta clean the stone away so they can be diggin’ again. Chances are, ye’re gonna die, smothered or bleedin, or all crushed up inside, all alone in the dark. An’ that’s lucky, ’cause if they drag ye out, you ain’t gonna see a Healer. Someone’ll haul ye out in the mine cart t’get you outa the way, an’ then they’ll pitch you out. Ye might die there. An’ mebbe it’ll be winter an’ ye’ll fall asleep in the cold. Or mebbe ye won’t die at all, mebbe ye’ll drag yourself t’ under the barn floor, where all of ye sleep, an’ mebbe ye’ll lie there, and mebbe someone’ll bring ye a little food. An mebbe ye’ll actually live. Yer bones’ll be all twisted up, a’course. But as soon as ye show up fer a meal—” He paused for effect “—they’ll put a pick an’ hammer in yer hand an’ send ye back in. Even if they have to take ye in the mine cart an ye crawl into the shaft.”

  The Healer made a choking noise.

  “Now,” Mags went on, “figure all them people, them kiddies, that die in there. They’re dyin’ hard, mostly. Pain. Scared. Fightin’ for breath. For the worst, mebbe dying for days. All alone an’ no one cares. So you figure what kinda ghosts they’d make.” The sweat of fear had soaked through his shirt now, he’d have to leave it to be washed before he could wear it again. The trews too. “Angry, I’d say. Wouldn’t you be? Wouldn’t you be mad that there was people just like you that was alive, and you ain’t? So we heard about all sorts of ghosts in the mine. There was one that’d come along, an’ no matter how careful you shored up behind you, he’d knock the timbers loose. Or the one that’d work the ceiling behind you, so it all fell in and you was trapped in a pocket and suffocate. There was one that’d find places for water t’come in an’ flood the shaft. An’ there was plenty, th’ ones that’d been brought out t’die, that’d come in the night an’ sit on yer chest and suffocate you, or walk through yer dreams an’ make ye feel how they died. But those weren’t the worst.”

  “They—weren’t?” Charis managed, through his horror.

  “No. They weren’t. Cause all that woulda happened if Cole Pieters were just a greedy bastard that didn’t give two pins ’bout anythin’ but money. But Cole Pieters weren’t just that. Cole Pieters were the meanest, nastiest, cruelest man I ever seen.”

  He could practically feel Charis’ eyes going wide with shocked surprise.

  “I seen him beat kiddies t’death for just about nothin’. I seen him beat ’em senseless, then have ’em dragged down into mine an’ the shaft collapsed around ’em. I seen him watch a couple go after each other over half a piece of bread, an’ laugh as one of ’em beat in the other’s head against a rock. I seen him tie up a kiddie out at the sluices overnight in winter ’cause he wasn’t findin’ enough glitter, an’ the kiddie soaked through wet. He died, naturally. He catch ye doin’ anything he could call stealin’ an’ off’d come an ear, cause ye don’t need an ear to work a seam, and maybe it’d fester, and maybe it’d heal. He’d smash your teeth just cause he felt like it.” Mags finally ran out of words and stumped along, exhausted by what had come flooding out of him. But he still had one more thing to say. “Now. You figure what sorts of ghosts those kiddies make. Then ask me why I’m feared of ghosts.”

  He remembered, oh, how he remembered, silently talking to the spirits in the dark. Reminding them that he wasn’t the one responsible for their deaths. Pointing out he was no different from them—maybe worse off, because he was hungry and they weren’t, he was cold or hot, and they weren’t, he was exhausted, and they weren’t. Begging them to turn their anger on the ones responsible for all the pain—Cole Pieters and his sons. He’d go to sleep thinking at them, or whenever he was startled by an unexpected sound in the mine.

  He couldn’t remember who had told him and the others about the ghosts of the dead miners. He didn’t think it was the Pieters’ boys, but it might have been. It wouldn’t have been the elaborate story he had just told Nikolas and Charis, of course; the Pieters’ boys had about the same imagination as a turnip, and none of that business about dying slowly and painfully would even have occurred to them. But it didn’t take much imagination to put together a lot of dead and dying mine-slaveys, ghosts, and some fun scaring the living mine-slaveys together.

  Ghost stories were the sorts of things that were whispered in the dark when you were too cold or hungry to sleep, because misery prefers to have company. The ghost stories that the Pieters boys told would have been simple and impersonal. But the stories the kiddies told each other . . . those had names.

  “Remember Bat?” “Issie sat on me chest last night!” “I seen Lu at privy, I swear!” Every ghost had a name and a face, and even if the faces looked much alike—dirty, straggling, greasy hair, cheekbones sharp with hunger—it was still the face of someone you’d eaten with, worked with, huddled up with against the cold.

  “I’m sorry, Mags,” Nikolas whispered, finally. “I had no idea. . . .”

  The shape on the other side of him, the Healer Charis, just nodded, dumbly.

  :That was well done, Chosen,: Dallen said gently. :I was hoping we’d be able to get that out of you.:

  He thought about that. :That why you teased me ’bout it?:

  :Yes. To get you started. You’ve had that bottled up inside you for far too long, and it needed to be told to someone who would feel it, not merely be horrified, then do his best to forget about it.: Dallen sounded very contrite. :And now I apologize, because unlike Nikolas, I did know, and I prodded at you anyway.:

  The sweat of fear was drying, making his shirt itch. Mags scratched at his shoulder absently. :Ye meant well.: He pondered it for a moment. :Reckon was like lettin’ pus out of a wound.:

  :Very like.:

  “Well,” he said aloud, after a long stretch of walking in silence. “Now ye know. So if ye want t’make it up t’me, well, ye can.” He scratched his other shoulder. “Figure out if it is a ghost. An’ get rid of it.” He sighed. “There probably ain’t nobody in Haven that’s died as hard as any of the mine-kiddies did, and probably no reason for a ghost t’be that angry, but it doesn’t matter to m’gut. Understand?”

  Nikolas sighed. “Yes, Mags, we do.”

  He nodded, as the corner where their inn was came into view. “Good,” was all he said.

  But it was enough.

  7

  There were glimpses of eyes in the rock, the cold touch of a clawlike hand. Mags tried not to look, tried not to think about them. But he thought he could see them anyway. He knew who they belonged to, too, but he tried not to think of the name.

  Jak. I was Jak.

  He could almost, but not quite, hear the name being whispered. He chipped away at the rock in a cold sweat. He knelt in the shaft just as he always did, rock just a few finger lengths from his nose, his knees fitted into smooth hollows that he himself had painstakingly cut out. After all, the Cole boys were only listening for the sounds of rock being cut, and a little work in making smooth places for your legs to fit now meant a lot less pain later. His lamp, strapped to his forehead, cast a dim light on the rock face in front of him. One little flame, in that lamp, fed by oil, with a metal reflector behind it. You didn’t want the flame to burn too high, it’d burn the skin of your forehead. You turned it as low as you dared.

  Except that meant shadows, and in the shadows, were the hints, the glints, of a pair of eyes.

  Hungry eyes, the eyes of someone who had scrabbled for life and had it taken away from him anyway.

  Jak. I was Jak.

  “Leave me be,” Mags whispered. “Leave me be, I nivver hurt ye, I nivver took from ye. I nivver shoved ye t’edge of huddle i’ th’ col’. Leave me be. Go fin’ Bon. ‘E’s th’ ’un thet stole yer bread. Go bother Calli. She nobbled yer blanket.”

 
Around him, behind him in the darkness, came the sounds of tapping, and echoes of tapping. He had just begun his half-day down here, but of course, he was hungry already. They were all, always hungry. The porridge of barley and oats that they all got for their breakfast didn’t last for very long. Especially not when you were working as hard as you could, chipping away the rock. But he was used to that; in fact, the times when he wasn’t hungry were branded in his memory. There weren’t more than a handful of them, and most of them were connected with visits from priests, those cursed god-men who promised everything after you were dead.

  They must have been branded in Jak’s memory too, or at least, whatever memory a ghost had. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe now that Jak was dead he knew what the god-men told was all lies. It was all the same rubbish anyway. Suffer on earth and be rewarded in a heaven Mags didn’t believe in, by gods who didn’t see fit to do something about misery right now. Sometimes, when he had a moment to think, and something turned his mind toward these gods the priests were so big about, he wanted to hit the priests, hit the gods if they existed. But that took energy, and mostly he didn’t have the energy to waste. But Jak, now, Jak had listened to the god-men, and listened to the stupid Cole daughter who read out of holy books at them while they ate, and maybe Jak had believed. And now Jak knew better. Knew it was all lies, that no one had anything for anyone who wasn’t important and rich, least of all gods. And now he wanted to be alive again, and he’d do what it took to get alive again.

  It didn’t work that way, but since everything else Jak had been told was a lie, he had no reason to believe he couldn’t steal someone else’s body.

  “Bon stole yer bread,” Mags repeated, ruthlessly. “I nivver stole fr’m ye.” Mags carefully positioned his chisel and tapped at a likely spot in the seam with his hammer. It was a good broad seam, this one, as wide as the tunnel was tall, which meant there was no problem with spending most of his time hammering out waste rock and getting shouted at for not bringing up any sparklies today. This had been Jak’s seam. Was that why Jak was here?