by J. S. Morin
Delliah snorted. “It’s ‘yes, mistress,’ but I was talking to Ordy. It seems you’ve got a sense of humor at least.”
Ordy put up his hands, causing Rynn’s leash to jingle. “Did you agree to pay the water she used? Didn’t think so.”
Delliah walked around Rynn, who tried to turn to keep Delliah in front of her. Ordy’s hand latched onto her shoulder and held her firm. “She looks even skinnier than I’d thought. We’ll have to get more food into her. Look, you can see her ribs.” Rynn felt a hand run up her back and straightened. Delliah came back around the front side and took Rynn’s chin in her hand. With the thumb of her other hand, she forced Rynn’s eyelid up, first the left eye, then the right. She nodded in satisfaction. She pried Rynn’s elbows wide, robbing her of her last futile attempt to cover up, and frowned.
“Probably not much use as a breeder, but we’ll see once she’s filled out a bit. Show me your teeth.”
Still reeling from the comment about breeding, Rynn complied. She bared her teeth at Delliah like a dog minus the growl. Delliah produced a small wooden dowel from a pocket and pulled back Rynn’s lips. Rynn got the idea and opened her mouth wide. The dowel pressed her tongue down briefly, causing her to gag.
“We’ll get her to a proper doctor back home, but for now she seems sound enough to travel. Have you got any coughs, girl?” Rynn shook her head. “Any fevers, chronic aches, stomach sensitivities, anything at all wrong with you? Believe it or not, Rynn, your well-being is of considerable interest to me.”
Rynn tried to will Madlin awake. Jamile ought to know some malady she might be able to make use of. Unfortunately, she had never managed the trick of waking her twin on command. Plausible lies eluded her, so she was left with just the truth.
“No ma’am, not as far as I know.”
“Mistress.”
“Yes mistress, no mistress.”
Ordy smirked. “Nothing but that clever tongue at least.”
“Just get her dressed,” Delliah said. She picked up an armload of clothes from outside the door and dumped them into Ordy’s arms.
“If you don’t mind,” Rynn said as soon as the door closed behind Delliah. She held up her shackles.
“No argument this time,” Ordy agreed. He reached to his belt and Rynn watched as the mechanism worked as she had envisioned. A length of chain reeled out after the key. After he had unlocked her shackles and leash—all keyed the same, Rynn noted—the mechanism pulled the key back. There was a whirring as it worked, which made the prospect of a stealthy unlocking difficult, but Rynn filed that away under “problems for later.”
To call what Delliah had left “clothing” gave it perhaps too much credit. There was a dress the size and shape of a shirt for a man Hayfield’s size, and a belt with a box frame buckle—a nice simple design she could appreciate, but it didn’t give her much for parts to improvise tools from.
“This is it?” Rynn asked. “What about shoes, stockings, undergarments.”
“Cap it and just put it on. It’ll keep you from catching chill and getting ogled by your own kind. That’s all you need.”
Rynn glared at him, but started to get dressed. It took far less time than she had hoped.
Ordy had been wrong on one count. It hadn’t stopped her own kind from ogling her. Naul’s eyes had hardly left hers since they left the university.
“You look nice, now that you’re cleaned up,” Naul said to her, perhaps the fifth variant of the sentiment he’d offered her. After the shock of the laboratory, she’d had a chance to take better stock of the boy—and he was just a boy. She guessed that he was about Buckets’s age, perhaps fourteen or so. He was allowed to keep his hair ungroomed and the fuzz on his face unshaven. His face and limbs were thin, but he carried a paunch around his middle, a condition rarely tolerated among slaves.
As Naul walked beside her, Rynn envied him his slippers and the lack of a leash at his collar. She stumbled along barefoot, rubbing her soles raw, wincing with each unexpected step onto something she hadn’t seen. Not only was watching the ground difficult with the collar close under her chin, but every stumble cost her a tug at the neck when the half pace of slack to Ordy’s wrist ran out. Her arms were getting sore as well from the strain of keeping their weight off her collar. The iron had chafed her collarbone pink and raw. The neck of her dress was so wide that it barely hung onto her shoulders, but she had squirmed and coaxed it up close enough that she could tuck it under an edge of her collar. That had provided her some relief until Delliah noticed, told her she looked ridiculous, and tugged the cloth back into its proper, unhelpful position.
“Where are we going?” Rynn dared to ask. She got a sudden jerk at her leash in reply.
“I got a muzzle in the luggage, in case you can’t keep that valve of yours closed on your own,” Ordy threatened. “You got a good thing going here, girl, even if you don’t appreciate it yet.”
Rynn gave up on questioning and decided to figure it out on her own. She looked around the thunderail station for clues. Her geography was sketchy, but the whole area was filled with signage simple enough that even kuduks could read it.
As her eyes scanned the station for departure schedules, clocks, route maps, and anything else she might be able to piece together, she noticed the people. Kuduks gave her a glance and paid her little attention. Any human she caught looking her way averted their eyes. She felt like her own kind was abandoning her.
Rynn’s attention wandered until she felt a shock at the cold steel of the lift under her bare feet. The doors closed behind her captors and fellow slave, and they descended.
“Where are we going?” Rynn whispered in Naul’s ear, standing on her toes to reach. She hoped that perhaps the boy knew and would be more willing to share the information with her.
Instead he shrugged. “Why should it matter?” He took her attentions for more than idle questioning, whether innocently or otherwise, and took advantage of her proximity to wrap an arm around her.
Rynn squirmed, and the jangling of her shackles caught Ordy’s attention. He reached over Rynn to cuff Naul on the ear. “Hands off her. None of that now.”
“Yessir,” Naul replied, more glum than chastened by Ordy’s reprimand.
The lift stopped on the Third Layer. The Third Layer tunnels ran crosswise to the ones on the layer above; they ran east to west, out into the vast plains that lay on either side of the Homespire Mountains. Rynn had never considered that her captivity would take her outside the mountains under which she’d been born. For all Madlin’s limited adventures beneath the open skies, Rynn’s eyes had never seen the sun; she had never even ventured up to Eversall Sky to see the aerodrome. That thought quieted the others for long moments, as the enormity set in: she was to set off on an adventure, like it or not. She was heading for some alien landscape, heretofore unknown to her.
A tug at her neck reminded her to keep pace. She followed at Ordy’s heels as they passed beneath a sign labeled “Westbound.” The westbound platform was made of wood, the boards smooth beneath Rynn’s feet from years of pedestrian traffic. It was a new sensation feeling the ground she usually trod without thought every other day, suddenly in such intimate contact with her skin. It made her appreciate the sweepers who kept the platform clear of rubbish.
“Tickets,” a kuduk in a red uniform with gold buttons demanded. Delliah handed the ticket taker four slips of thick paper, which the kuduk leafed through briskly. “You’ll have to chain that one up.”
Delliah produced another document and handed it over as well. “He’s certified docile.”The ticket taker gave a quick perusal before nodding his consent.
“This one dangerous?” he gave a nod to Rynn, who felt her face flush as half the patrons in line turned to see the object of the question.
“Most definitely,” Delliah replied.
“She’ll either need to be locked up in the slave car, or you’ll need a locked compartment.”
“Yes,” Delliah answered. “I insist on a
locked compartment. After what I paid for this one, I don’t want her out of my sight or off my man’s leash unless we’re locked in.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
They filed aboard the thunderail, with Rynn going up just ahead of Ordy at the rear. It was the first time she’d been aboard one for any legal purpose. She gawked at all the people, kuduk and freeman alike, crowding into the cars. They looked so purposeful, driven, prosperous. She felt like a waif at a dinner party.
“Move it, teaspoon.” Ordy put a forearm to her back to prod her along. “This your first time on a thunderail?”
“Technically not. I’ve robbed three of them.”
Ordy laughed loud enough to draw stares from bystanders. “I might just decide to like you, Rynn. You really don’t care whose mug you spit in, do you? Tell me though, could you have admitted that yesterday?”
Rynn didn’t answer, but Ordy must have known anyway. She caught up to Naul and Delliah as they slipped into their compartment. Once all four of them were inside, Ordy slammed the sliding door closed. Rynn heard the mechanism catch, and judged that it was at least a half-inch steel latch holding the door. It was an idle observation, since she had no plans to escape a moving thunderail.
“Can I have a smoke, mistress?” Naul asked as he settled into his seat and flicked the restraining chain out of his way.
“Wait for us to be underway, and keep your pipe and anything you breathe out to the window.”
“Thank you, mistress. Been one of those kinda days, hasn’t it?”
Delliah sighed. “Don’t you implicate me in your deplorable habits, boy.”
Ordy sat Rynn down next to Naul and reached for the key. Rynn let out a long-suffering sigh at the thought of being free of her restraints. She heard but a single click of a lock as Ordy detached the leash. Without so much as releasing his grasp on the lock, he pulled over the chain from the top of the slave seat and clasped the lock shut on it once more. He stepped across to the kuduk side of the compartment and slung one of the bags down from his shoulder.
“Hey!” Rynn protested. “How about getting my hands free? What trouble can I cause in here?”
“I cannot even begin to—” Delliah began, but Ordy waved her away.
“Don’t bother trying to reason with her. I warned her once. She’s gotta learn.” Before even getting a chance to put the bag away, he opened it and poked about inside. He withdrew a contraption of leather straps and buckles all in a jumble. “Time that mouth of yours gave us all a rest.”
He crossed the compartment and loomed over Rynn. Then he untangled the straps and looped one of them around behind her head. Rynn saw a U-shaped flap of thick leather presented in front of her face and knew where it was meant to go. She clamped her mouth shut.
“You gonna fight me again?” Ordy asked. “How’d that work out for you last time? One last chance to do this the easy way.” He wiggled the end of the bit between her lips.
Rynn considered what would happen if she refused and what she could gain by complying. She was in no position to fight back. Any victory would be short lived. All she had to gain was pain for her troubles and a humiliating defeat—the latter guaranteed either way. She parted her teeth and the bit slid between them. There was a middle part that forced the tip of her tongue down and she fought back against it reflexively. By then the strap behind her head had been pulled tight and buckled. Ordy threaded other straps through loops and pulled buckles tight. In minutes, her jaw was pulled shut hard against the bit. She tried to talk, but there was a lining of rubber that pressed all around her lips that held a tight seal. She struggled and squirmed, but could get out no sound beyond a nasal hum.
Ordy pinched her nose shut. “Stop that, too.” He released her and finished putting their luggage away under the seats.
“It’s not so bad, you know,” Naul said, leaning over to her.
Rynn admitted to herself that the muzzle caused her no pain, though the straps could have been a bit looser for her comfort. It was the injury to her dignity that stung most. They had taken talking away from her.
“That’s staying on until the dinner cart comes around,” Delliah informed her. “You need fattening up. Whether you can keep it off after that is up to you.”
The thunderail lurched, and with a chugging of its enormous steam engine, got under way. As soon as it passed a walking pace, Naul slid open a window, fished a pipe and pipeweed from his pockets, and lit a match.
The kuduks across the way were upwind of him, but Rynn caught a whiff of the acrid leaves he smoked. She had smelled it before in pubs and taverns, a sedative herb that many freemen smoked to ease the nerves after stressful work. She had never known slaves to be allowed it, but she supposed that there were as many different rules for slaves as there were owners.
Rynn leaned over to watch out the window so she could see the sky when they emerged onto the plains. By unfortunate necessity, it meant leaning past Naul.
She felt his hands on the bare skin between her shoulders and her neck. “Sure,” he said. “No problem.” His voice garbled a bit as he talked around the pipe clenched in his teeth. His fingers began kneading the muscles, easing tension she didn’t realize was there. His ministrations were clumsy, but well meaning. He occasionally brushed against the fabric of her dress, knocking it further toward slipping off her shoulders. She kept squirming it back up.
“Ooh,” he commented. She felt him lift her collar. “Let me take care of that for you.” The pain of the chafing had gone on long enough that she was dulled to it. He dug in his pockets and she heard a cap unscrewing. One hand held her collar off her shoulder and the fingers of the other rubbed in an ointment that felt cool and numbing. She nodded a thanks when he was finished, and he went back to smoking his pipe.
Rynn saw the sky for the first time, leaning over as far as her chain allowed. It went up, and kept going, unending, away into the heavens. Madlin had never enjoyed open places, and Rynn found herself thankful for the protection of the thunderail car between her and the infinite expanse above.
When dinner arrived, Ordy removed the muzzle as promised. Rynn devoured a meal of plain bread and jerky, washed down with water. Not long after, she offered an opinion in a conversation between Delliah and Ordy, and found herself sentenced to the muzzle overnight.
She was a bad slave, she knew, and wore that fact as a suit of armor for her beleaguered pride. She had always hated “good slaves,” who spent their lives doing whatever they were told. She was determined never to become one of those, no matter what else it cost her.
Chapter 18
“The last leisurely thing I remember you doing is building me toys as a girl ... or was that ‘work’ too?” -Madlin Errol
The view in the machine rushed by at a blur as Erefan spun the dials. With practice, he was now able to manipulate dials in combination, sweeping down tunnels and maneuvering around obstacles such that he didn’t have to contend with losing his field of vision within solid objects. Twenty three of his twinborn agents had given him locations for the gathering of their companions, and Erefan had been scouring Korr to find them all. Cadmus had spent hours with charts and maps, sketching Korrish geography on slate boards with chalk, and cross-referencing the two worlds to figure out how to locate each gathering point.
Erefan studied the image framed in what he had come to call the “world-ripping machine.” There was a steaming reservoir of water with dozens of men and women frolicking in it—all human. A stone landing ran all around the water’s perimeter, with steps submerged just below the surface. Corridors ran in all directions out of the bathing chamber, the central pool of a humans-only bathhouse in Venterad Deep. Erefan recorded the dial settings in a log book that Kezudkan had provided. He used a heavy hand, letting the tip of his pencil score the paper. When he finished writing, he erased the entry.
Once he was satisfied the coordinates were still visible when the page was held in just the right light, he resumed his search. His next stop would be
a short trip to Venterad Sky to find an aerodrome warehouse staffed by slaves. He spun the fine-control dial for the vertical axis and watched as the view rose as if lifted by a crane.
Footsteps at the stairs changed Erefan’s plans in an instant. With rotations of several macro-control dials, he brought the view back to the vicinity of Eversall, then spun the inter-world controls until he found Tellurak once more. The whole process took only seconds, and by the time the hobbling Kezudkan entered the workshop, Erefan was diligently recording coordinates of ore veins once more, overwriting the collection points in Korr with a lighter touch of the pencil.
“You sleep less than the stones, Erefan,” Kezudkan bellowed across the room. “How long have you been awake?”
“Couldn’t say. Haven’t looked at the clock.”
Erefan didn’t look back, but tracked the old daruu’s progress by the sound of his cane on the stone floor. “What drives you to work yourself half to death for this machine? Are you worried I’ll have to sell you off to cover my debts, is that it?”
“History,” Erefan lied. He understood Kezudkan well enough to know which levers to pull. “Who invented the dynamo turbine? Ellek and Progau. Who first got an airship off the ground? Ebner Jornuss. Who made the first working repeater rifle? Da—”
“Dargrenn Maulle. What’s your point?”
“Kuduk names, all of them. What does anyone remember that was invented by a human—or a daruu, for that matter?”
“My people invented the arched bridge, multi-level cities, the convection ventilation forges, the—”
“And some kuduk came along and invented suspension bridges, thunderails, and a thousand other things. Who invented the pathway between worlds?”
Kezudkan paused for a moment and tapped a craggy grey finger to his cheek. “Kezudkan Graniteson.”
“And his assistant, Erefan.”
Kezudkan snorted. “So you’ve got a fire burning in you, fueled by nothing more than vanity and hope? I suppose whatever keeps you working. Speaking of which, join me for breakfast. The kitchen will have someone down with a platter any moment now.”