by Stephen Hunt
Yes, I could do with a helping of that myself.
‘You’ve got to think of something,’ begged Adella. ‘If you know how far we’ve been taken, you can work out a way to get out of here. It’s your brains that Carter needs.’
Not that he knows it. Despite herself, Willow couldn’t help feeling sorry for Adella. How desperate must she be to consider enlisting Willow’s help in escaping? But there wasn’t much of use Willow remembered from her library. Maybe some platitudes by philosophers who had been imprisoned for most of their lives. About how your mind always remained free, however bad your external circumstances grew. But Adella Cheyenne didn’t want to hear truisms. It was plans for a warship and the means to build it that she wanted.
‘It’s a miracle we need,’ sighed Willow. Her brooding was interrupted by a commotion outside the front of the grading hall, a runner entering the structure and calling for the overseer. Old Kassina rushed back like a shot. A brief, hurried conversation, then she strode down the line and called orders to the workers, exhorting them to work harder and faster.
‘Not any quicker,’ groaned Adella. ‘We’re new to this.’
‘New to real work, perhaps,’ barked Kassina, overhearing the worker’s complaints. ‘At least pretend to look like you’ve done a full day’s graft in your life. Princess Helrena is coming to inspect the initial deposits. The mistress is accompanied by two of the house’s allies – her cousin Baron Machus, and half-sister, Elanthra Skar.’ She strutted down the line, clapping her hands and shouting warnings about looking tardy in front of the visitors.
Princess Helrena. The bitch who put a scar across Carter’s face. It was the imperial noblewoman’s fault that they had ended up here. Willow felt a deep loathing rise within her. Willow wasn’t used to hating, but she could learn the skill when it came to their cursed mistress. At the mere suggestion they would be encountering the ruthless princess again, Adella seemed to find a newly discovered reserve of speed. Her fingers flickered across the rubble, scanning, sorting and filling the bins behind the belt. ‘Why us?’ moaned Adella. ‘Why us? With all the countries closer to Vandia they could have raided for slaves.’
I swear, if Adella were twice as smart, she’d be a halfwit. ‘If you’re going to play the highwayman, you don’t stand outside your own house to rob travellers. Weyland’s far enough away that the imperium’s not going to find an angry skyguard squadron turning up looking for revenge.’ And their taste for slaving aside, we must be savages compared to them.
When Helrena Skar swept into the hall, the noblewoman looked little different from her appearence in the bandit carrier, arriving to purchase her new labour force. A retinue of guardsmen followed Helrena, two fellow nobles accompanying her at the front of the party. One of them was a woman wearing similar finery to Helrena. Princess Elanthra, presumably, her face as cold as a block of ice. Hard edges that might have been sculpted from porcelain, a short black bob of a haircut that gave her an androgynous quality. A brooding hulk of man trailed after them. Baron Machus – his brutal features only made less dangerous by the dim look of comprehension he wore on his face. If the distance between the three of them was any guide, Willow pegged the hard-looking man as the closer of the princess’s two allies. There seemed to be a tension in the air at odds with a mere tour of the spoils. The slaves who worked the line might as well have been invisible. Their contempt set Willow’s nerves on edge; her toil superfluous to whatever machinations were these nobles’ concern today. Was that how tenant farmers had felt back at Northhaven? Willow and her father riding past in a sleek carriage and Willow with as little care for their names as these three? How the tables have turned. There were doubtless more than a few working beside Willow secretly pleased to see a Landor heir brought low… made to toil at this drudgery. Willow stared at the group. She spotted a girl of around thirteen of fourteen years standing next to a bald retainer in grey robes. It seemed an age since Willow had seen someone too young to survive the sky mines’ labour camp. She had forgotten that children even existed in the world. This one was no slave or servant, though; not if the luxurious cut of her uniform was anything to go by. She wore her blonde hair in elaborate curls, cascading down the side of an elaborately engraved breastplate. The young girl peered curiously around the sorting hall, as if this was the first time she’d seen it. The man whose hand she was holding looked like a slave, though. Albeit one far better fed than any sky-mining vassal. Willow was curious about the girl’s presence, so out of place here, but she concentrated on working the conveyor belt instead. The three visitors halted near enough for Willow to eavesdrop on their conversation over the grading line’s clatter.
‘You!’ snapped Princess Elanthra at the local overseer. ‘Bring me the tally for the day’s sort.’
Kassina returned with a sheet detailing how much had been separated. Princess Helrena made a point of receiving it first, only then passing it across to her half-sister.
‘A tonne of terbium, another of samarium and cerium. Very good. That will bring in over seventy thousand taels at the next market release.’
‘It would have brought in that much,’ corrected Helrena, taking the tally sheet and dismissively tossing it back at the supervisor.
‘What do you mean, would?’ asked Elanthra, her tone as cutting as her sharp cheekbones. ‘Have you some other way to dispose of the load, rather than through the registered brokers?’
‘Oh, I have found another way,’ said Helrena. ‘I have a method of selling it off that means I will retain your share of the cut!’
‘My share? You are missing the point of our alliance. You share from my strikes as I share from yours. We spread the risk of not returning with a serviceable strike from the eruptions.’
‘Yes, risk,’ snorted Helrena. ‘And how will you spend the money from my strike? I know how you should spend it, Elanthra. Buy more fuel and actually use it to send transporters to your allies’ assistance. Because my slaves had to take this sky mine all on their own. Fresh meat, barely trained, and you left me out there to swing. How much risk did you take doing that?’
‘My slaves were in the air,’ argued Elanthra. ‘Doing the same as your workers… looking for a strike. We were too far away to assist you. This is outrageous. If I had staked a rock and you had returned empty handed, you would be first in the queue with your hand out, demanding your tithe of what’s mined. This is a transparent ploy to renege on our agreement! You are looking to cheat me out of what is mine.’
‘I’m not looking to cheat you, I am cheating you,’ said Helrena. ‘Do you think I am stupid? Did you think my spies wouldn’t learn you’re working with Prince Phemus. You agreed to stay out of the fray and let him steal any rock we went after.’
‘And where is your proof? Does your paranoia include accusing Machus here? Have you not wondered where his slaves were? Why none of his hitters came to your aid?’
‘His slaves were bringing home their own strike, a sky mine twice the size of this one. Although I am informed his rock is filled only with low-grade ores.’
‘You are well informed, cousin, as always,’ said Baron Machus, his voice a deep, slow timbre, as though he was working to join each word in the sentence. ‘You are lucky, Helrena. But then, you always were. Less to dig out, and every tonne your workers take filled with riches.’ He moved over to the sorting line directly in front of Willow and Adella, running his hands over the rubble. He lifted the scanner out of Adella’s fingers, examined the readout, and then gave the device back to her. ‘Samarium and cerium. God’s teeth! How much is cerium worth on the metals exchange at the moment? You will more than make up for the losses incurred by the destruction of your last mine. Yes, lucky. Even your slaves here are beautiful.’ He reached out and placed his ham-sized fingers around Adella’s cheeks, tilting her face back and forth as if he was a traveller examining a mare at market. Wisely, other than her surprise at being singled out, Adella didn’t bridle or flinch. ‘You should see the dogs I have working on my st
ation.’
Helrena shrugged. ‘That’s only because you’ve already cleared out every woman with her own set of teeth and tossed them into your harem.’
‘Ah, what a waste.’ From the lustful glint in the prince’s dim eyes, Willow didn’t think the baron was referring to the fact that the ores coming down the conveyor belt belonged to his cousin. ‘You should sell this one to me. Let me scrub her up a little and see if I can’t find the diamond among the discard.’ He winked slyly towards Adella.
‘These northern barbarians are tough workers,’ said Helrena. ‘But they’re from the wilds. You go dipping your wick with them, who knows what medicine you’ll need to cure your manhood afterwards.’
‘I don’t care what slaves your idiot cousin’s biting the pillow with!’ interrupted Elanthra. ‘If you’ve no intention of honouring our compact, why am I wasting my time here?’
‘So you can carry word back to Prince Phemus,’ said Helrena. ‘Tell that little turd that it will take more than sabotaging a single claim for my house to lose its mining concession. I’ll pay the emperor his tithes on time. With what I’m mining inside this claim, I’ll pay our father back double!’
‘I demand my share!’
‘I’ll give you the same derisory stipend you tossed me when I was dry, and the same excuses too.’ Helrena picked up a handful of rubble from the belt in her leather-gloved hand and tossed it derogatorily at her half-sister. ‘Low-grade dirt for a low-grade ally.’
‘You’re a welching, oath-breaking bitch,’ swore Elanthra. The visiting princess swung around and stalked away, her guards peeling off and flanking her as she departed.
‘That was hardly wise,’ growled Machus.
‘Perhaps not, but it’s the best sport I’m going to get this week. Elanthra doesn’t have the courage to move against me directly, so instead she tries to bleed me to death. Weaken me until I become an irrelevance and my concession is given to one of Phemus’s lapdogs? No! What percentage of my income do you think that dog has been promising Elanthra?’
‘Enough, I am sure.’
‘You are wrong, it’s never enough,’ said Helrena. ‘You’ve slept with her, haven’t you?’
‘Of course, but only out of curiosity. I didn’t get much out of it. Like cosying up to a block of ice, all bones and sharp elbows.’
‘Well, then, I wouldn’t repeat the experience. She can’t be trusted.’
‘Of course she can. As long as you trust her to endorse whoever looks like winning.’
‘If she thinks I’m going to lose, she’s as poor a judge of people as she was a partner.’
The two nobles walked off, ignoring the obsequious bows from the sorting line’s supervisor. Willow rubbed the sweat off her brow. We don’t even exist to them. They’re as careless talking around us as furniture; we matter that little. Willow sneaked a look at Adella. She was fuming inside over bring groped like a piece of meat. Or was it just that she had been forgotten about – not a feeling that Adella Cheyenne was accustomed to, Willow guessed.
Kassina returned to her normal state of attentive agitation, prowling the belt and exhorting the slaves to throw their backs into it. She halted by Adella and Willow. ‘Faster, faster now! I’ve seen cripples sort faster. Put your nose to the grindstone.’
‘Why? For those three nobles?’ said Willow. ‘They don’t even get on with each other.’
‘You think if the next stake’s snatched by the princess’s enemies, it’ll be her starving, girl? Mining forces are only fed when there’s work to do. Those disagreements and feuds of theirs are life and death for the likes of us. We rise and fall with the princess’s fortunes. When the princess and her staff are talking, you’d better be listening and learning.’
‘And what would I learn?’ asked Willow.
‘That Prince Phemus’s aunt is a woman called Circae. She’s as mean as they breed them out here, and she lives to see Helrena put out of favour. She wants the imperial throne for her nephew. That’s not a good situation for us. So throw your back into it. We take our luck with this new rock and we use it to stay alive.’
‘I don’t need to listen to the princess’s oversized pig cousin,’ said Adella, petulantly.
‘Shut up and work! That sweet little face of yours. Out here, your looks are as dangerous as a purse full of jangling coins in a cave of brigands. You’d be better off without your beauty, better off with my face.’
‘Who was the young girl standing behind the guards?’ asked Willow.
‘That’s Lady Cassandra Skar, Princess Helrena’s daughter.’
‘I would not bring a girl to see this sky-borne hell.’
The supervisor shrugged. ‘Why not, everything in the sky mines will be hers one day. Besides, Helrena never lets her out of her sight for too long.’
‘Forgive me if I don’t look upon the princess as the soft and caring sort,’ said Willow.
‘That child’s father was Aivas Skar, one of Circae’s sons. The relationship between Helrena and Aivas was not approved. Their two houses have been feuding with each other as long as anyone remembers. The old witch’s son was sent to the legions in disgrace, where he died fighting one of Vandia’s neighbours. Circae blames Helrena for her son’s death, even though it was Circae who sought his demotion from celestial-upper to celestial-lower caste. Circae who had him exiled and as good as got him killed.’
Now Willow saw why the princess kept her daughter close. ‘So, Circae wants the granddaughter in her custody? Not for the girl’s sake, but as a token of power… to deprive Helrena of all that remains of her time with Circae’s son?’
‘You have good instincts,’ nodded the supervisor. ‘Knowing what’s going on behind the scenes and the factions fighting for control here, it can mean the difference between life and death for us. You’re correct. Circae would have the child away from Princess Helrena in an instant if the emperor permitted it. She would teach Helrena a lesson she would never forget. But the bonds of motherhood still mean something, even in the imperium. Now, back to your work.’
Willow was disgusted. As stifling as dealing with her family had been back home, the Landors’ difficulties were nothing compared to the machinations of the imperial family. What Willow had endured at Hawkland Park was mollycoddling next to this level of animosity. She set her odium aside and continued to toil in the numbing heat, turned into a sweating automaton by the drudgery. Hours of labour later, a slave slipped into the hall bearing a message for Kassina. A brief look of misery crossed the supervisor’s face, tempered by annoyance at the interruption. Then she signalled to the engineer running the line to halt production and strode down the conveyor belt, clapping her hands. ‘Enough! Enough! Muster outside. Sorting is suspended for a few minutes.’
There was a tension in her words that made Willow believe this wasn’t a scheduled maintenance closure. What now? No surprises were pleasant for a slave… that was a lesson Willow had picked up early. The double doors at the end of the structure opened and they filed out, feeling the full force of heat beyond the hall’s shade. All around the sky mine’s surface, slaves emerged from newly excavated mine works. Many of the men stripped to the waist, bearing the same heavy equipment they had gone down with. Behind Willow hovered their station, tethered tight to the new rock. The princess’s craft was docked with the station. In the sky in front of Willow, she watched another rock drawing close, arriving slowly, manoeuvred by a squadron of transporters, cables attached and pulling it through the volcanic mist. A second vessel followed behind the new rock – a long silver arrow of destruction that looked every bit the equal of Helrena’s war craft.
‘Don’t tell me they’ve found a second sky mine for us to work,’ moaned Adella.
‘That rock out there’s mined out,’ said Kassina. ‘A barracks station. No work for anyone. This is a tradition… a ritual. One still required by the emperor.’
More and more slaves left the tunnel works. Their sky mine floated in the atmosphere, exposed to winds and cl
ouds pregnant with hot ash. Soot stung Willow’s exposed skin. Face, arms and neck peppered while she waited. There was the old slave, Thomas Gale. The man in charge of managing the station for his Vandian mistress. No sign of Princess Helrena and her two allies. Whatever was about to unfold was obviously beneath the noble visitors. In the sky, the other station grew larger, its passage drawing to a halt in front of them. On its surface, she could see hundreds of slaves lined up at the edge of the mass, also waiting for something. For us?
‘This is Station Twenty-Two, property of the House of Prince Phemus Skar,’ called Thomas Gale. ‘It was his noble highness’s labour force who fought us for possession of the sky mine we now stand on. The slaves of Prince Phemus fought hard, but they lost, and they now occupy an empty station. They must wait in a state of idleness until the world’s bounty is again showered on the imperium. By the grace of Princess Helrena,’ continued Thomas Gale, ‘the station and flagship of Prince Phemus are permitted entry to her territory for the prince to give the sign required by the emperor.’
Sign? Willow couldn’t see any sign from the rocket ship. What is this? She waited with the other women from the grading line, none of them speaking. Puzzlement mingled with the relief of any excuse for a break from the grinding sort. The slaves from the rock hauled in front of them stared back just as silently, gazing at Willow and the Weylanders across the chasm of sky. After a minute passed, a flare exploded out of the rival craft’s missile tubes, shattering the heavy silence. A green sun left floating down through the hot, gassy fog.
‘Green – that’s a third,’ hissed their overseer, rubbing her cheeks. ‘Prince Phemus is a hard bastard. Makes you glad that it’s the princess we have as our mistress.’
A Third? Willow was about to ask what the overseer meant when she heard the first screams from the visiting station, figures tumbling down over the rock’s edge. The way the slaves’ legs flailed with their arms stilled, Willow could tell that their hands had been bound. Behind the rival slave force, guardsmen with bayonet-tipped rifles marched down the rear of the work force, every third slave stabbed in the spine and thrown forward, falling into the void.